


Thawing Out

by Seaside_Dreaming



Series: Thawing Out [2]
Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: (first chapter only) - Freeform, Abusive Relationships, Alastor Has a Heart (Hazbin Hotel), Alastor is Bad at Feelings (Hazbin Hotel), Angel gets an arc too, Angel is a subtle badass and takes no shit from anyone, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Arguing, Banter, Canon-typical swearing, Daydreaming, Glitchy Vox, Heavy themes of emotional abuse, Hurt No Comfort, Husk is too old for this shit, Introspection, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mutual Pining, Non-Explicit Sex, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Slow Burn, Slow burn but in a friendship kind of way, Valentino is a narcissist, Vox is a scheming bastard but he's very tired these days, Vox is also bad at feelings, enemies to frenemies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:00:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 33,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29551080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seaside_Dreaming/pseuds/Seaside_Dreaming
Summary: Seeing a small crack in Vox's screen nags at Alastor more than he likes to admit.Vox wishes things were better. Sooner or later, Alastor has to come to terms with the fact he has feelings, in general.
Relationships: Alastor/Vox (Hazbin Hotel), Angel Dust/Vox (Hazbin Hotel), Valentino/Vox (Hazbin Hotel)
Series: Thawing Out [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2170974
Comments: 72
Kudos: 146





	1. Chilling Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Oops this is a series now
> 
> I've been working on this for a few months, and after drafting four chapters, have finally gotten the courage to start posting it. Not Fazed isn't required, it's just a bit of insight on Vox that lines up with how I'm portraying his character in this fic too, and shares recurring terminology used throughout.

It’s been one of _those_ months. 

Valentino goes through cycles of hot and cold with his affections. Often, his default is a winter so barren and long-lasting, it chills Vox’s circuitry into a state of listlessness and wishing for better things. In contrast, Valentino’s moments of warmth are painfully brief, and filled with such a decadent sweetness it leaves him reeling, sick to his stomach, and second-guessing.

Years before, Vox wistfully awaited these blissful episodes. These days, now that he has identified the pattern, the very thought makes him tired. This is Hell; it’s simply asinine to expect a healthy relationship down here, and yet he can’t help but bite back the stinging acknowledgement that things shouldn’t be this way. Perhaps it’s even more asinine to wish for anything more than this out of a relationship that started with less than sincerity and their attraction to each other in mind. 

But is it really so unreasonable, he wonders, to wish things could change, despite how it began? It’s gotten old, tiring, and this _winter_ is especially frigid.

It’s getting late, Vox notes idly. With his internal systems, there’s no need for him to peer at the nearby digital clock to note its time, and yet he does. Something like 7:52pm, it says, he guesses. It’s difficult to see it from this angle, with the back of his cumbersome head flat against a pillow. 

Not too late, really, but who’s keeping track.

The bed creaks beneath his back, then quiets.

“Vox,” his name is called. It’s more of an impatient chide than it is a call of affection, and his distracted gaze wanders back toward the face of Valentino looming over him. The moth’s bent knees rest on either side of him, keeping him firmly perched in the TV Overlord’s lap. Any prior movement Valentino had been making has stopped. “You’re flaggin’. Gimme something to work with, here.”

Never _“Do you want to keep going”,_ never _“Let’s finish this some other time”._ When it’s for Valentino’s enjoyment, Vox has long since learned not to bother getting out of it. He has a choice, technically, but for how much grief an _“I’d rather not”_ earns him, it certainly doesn’t feel like one. It doesn’t faze him, not really, but would it double-kill the guy to check in once in a while?

“If you’re not gonna pay attention…” the moth warns with a growl. He doesn’t finish the thought, opting instead to glower expectantly at his partner’s lack of investment during one of their many intimate times together. His thumb glides up the side of his would-be lover’s display and stops in the upper left corner of Vox’s screen. A would-be gentle caress turned threat. A would-be intimate gesture ignored. A brief but frightfully intense flicker of irritation passes behind his squint.

Vox offers his sincerest insincere smile. It’s sheepishly apologetic at best, weary and meaningless at worst. He’s seen that glint before, knows it’s a sign the taller’s experienced a lapse in self-control. Better to play along than let him have any reason to really lose his temper.

“Sorry, baby,” he placates smoothly. “Guess work’s been stressin’ me out more than I thought.”

“Well, put it behind you,” Valentino demands more than he soothes. As Vox does his best to comply by sliding his claws up the moth’s thighs to rest on his hip bones, the taller bends and dips his torso into his. The new angle earns a quiet hiss from the TV Overlord, and Valentino’s grin is sharpened by its hunger—the sound is an obvious victory, and good enough consent, if it matters. His tone takes on a more salacious quality, and he purrs into the crook between the base of Vox’s display and his shoulder. “Let’s fuck those troubles right outta you.”

Vox doesn’t object, and tells himself he wouldn’t, even if he had a genuine choice. 

The only one allowed to say _no_ is Valentino.

Though his hips cooperate, his mind rejects the scene above him. It wanders to other places, other situations, other faces. He wonders if this would be less of a _chore_ with Angel Dust. He traces the spider’s form in his thoughts, but finds it ultimately unappealing outside the context of an unequivocally erotic aesthetic. He dares to think of Alastor, knowing the deer would sooner tear him limb from limb and circuit from circuit than so much as look his way fondly. 

Or worriedly, for that matter— With a pang of embarrassment in realising his ridiculous longing for something so utterly _romantic,_ he finds, in this moment, it is not the glitz and glamour and sensation of sex itself that he craves, but the closeness. He thinks of Alastor again, allows himself to entertain a ludicrous fantasy where his vehement rival is instead tender enough to brush away his stresses and worries, and in a way that does not benefit only his own selfish impulses. 

Asinine, unthinkable, unreasonable. The absolute farthest from any possible truth. And yet Vox pursues it, chases it with claws outspread, indulges in it, allows it to play like a movie behind his eyes, private only to him. 

He fantasises a scenario in which Alastor greets him after a troubling day, arms draped over his tired shoulders. He fantasises a scenario in which, with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, the deer invites him to bed, claws gentle and smile warm—a _spring_ to combat Valentino’s _winter._

A pleasured curse slips from him as his mind wanders to the more tender than purely intimate—Does Alastor have a tail? Would he shiver if Vox ran a hand along his back toward it? Would he let him really caress him, hold him in his lap? 

Would he care enough to stop if Vox was tired, or changed his mind?

As his mind strolls him through the unrealistic possibilities, both intimate and mundane, Valentino is insatiable above him. By chance, or perhaps in lieu of the reality, Vox’s fantasy aligns with the moth’s movements, and his breath catches. His hands grip ever so slightly more, his head tilts back, the image on his screen glitches. Valentino is none the wiser to Vox’s private cinema, and takes the sudden animated reaction as a personal win.

The moth is not one to stay and cuddle afterward (what a stupidly adolescent wish). He lifts himself up, strides away to clean himself up (it’s gotten even colder, now). Only once he’s half-clothed does he bother to halfheartedly toss a hand towel onto Vox’s leg; a wordless cue he's to clean himself up. 

The TV Overlord doesn’t move, save for plopping a hand limply onto the towel, and laying his free arm over his screen. He opts instead to relish in the dimming remnants of his far-off make-believe ideal for another few moments, and barely registers Valentino’s voice.

“Until next time, Voxxy,” comes the teasing purr. 

The door shuts. 

Vox heaves a sigh. 

It takes him another minute or so to find the motivation to move, to take himself through the motions. The last echos of his daydream have faded, leaving him with a cloudy, tired, empty mind, and a blank expression. 

Idly he wishes he had a functional mouth; a cigarette seems like an appropriate companion at the large window of his penthouse where he stands, in nothing but pyjama bottoms. He wishes for better things, whether he deserves them or not. He wishes for a metaphorical spring, whether it’s obtainable or not. 

The closest he can get is a walk in the cooler nighttime city air, and an attempt to clear his head.

Dressed again in his usual snappy attire—he has an image to maintain, after all—he makes his way out. His penthouse bed is left forgotten behind him, but not the pervasive chill.


	2. Failing Facades

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can’t you have sympathy for me just this once?”
> 
> “No,” the deer answers sweetly, and turns on his heel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This exchange is entirely the reason this fic exists tbh

Of all the people Vox expects to catch sight of this far out, and this late at night, the Radio Demon is not one of them.

He assumes, at least, that it’s Alastor—A blip of scarlet among an everlastingly dim-red backdrop, down here, could be anyone. But not just ‘anyone’ walks with such a presence, or hums with such a notable cadence. Not just _anyone_ with black-tipped hair and, dare he say, ears—or a ragged but finely-starched coat, and a crisp hoof-like _click-clack_ of heels.

On a normal day, the Radio Demon’s presence and aesthetic already has a notable draw on his attention; years worth of unyielding, unrequited attraction assures it. Tonight, however, it has stopped Vox in his tracks. He stands far enough away and at such an angle the deer is unlikely to have seen him, though he’d be a fool to assume he hasn’t been noticed. Alastor is no oblivious low-level demon, and Vox’s crush is decidedly one-sided: returned only with such a visceral malice and vitriol, it nearly rivals Valentino’s numerous _winters._

The reminder is almost enough to turn him away. 

Vox doesn’t deal in _almosts._

Motivated by the lingering imagery of his night’s fantasies, he turns to make a course instead toward his rival. He tries to make his approach seem casual, or at the very least nonthreatening, by pocketing his hands, dipping his screen, and humming something he hopes isn’t too affronting to his intended company.

Before Vox gets within even ten steps of him, something about the Radio Demon’s aura seems to darken.

“Don’t.” Alastor’s demand comes first without even a turn of his head. As his microphone stand materialises in the crook of his elbow and settles against his shoulder, Vox swears he hears the deer murmur a few far-from-friendly things under his breath. 

The TV Overlord doesn’t heed the warning. If anything, he takes it as a dare. 

Alastor is unwavering, challenging in his silence, his steady pace, and the tightening of his grip on his microphone. 

“Not here to hassle you,” Vox soothes reflexively as he quickens his pace. An odd, unneeded holdover from habitually placating his partner, no doubt, exacerbated by the moth’s volatile mood as of late. “Let’s just have a chat, you and me.”

“We have nothing to discuss,” the Radio Demon sends a glance backward through knitted brows and clenched teeth.

“Don’t we?” Vox rounds his side and comes to stand in front of him. With hands stuffed halfway in his trouser pockets, he dons an attempt at a smile that is no more amicable than is appropriate. He realises all too late he doesn’t have much of an excuse, much less any particular plan. Loneliness and a suppressed desperation for consolation will do that to a person, maybe. “Can’t even spare a passing thought for your good ol’ _pal?”_

Forced to stop, Alastor regards him coldly without lifting his chin, and glares from beneath his bangs. 

He’s looking for company in the wrong place, Vox knows, but just seeing Alastor’s face eases his tension somewhat, even if the expression is in stark contrast to what he wishes it would be. He tries not to let his mind wander too far backward into his what-ifs, tries not to let his own expression soften as he recalls the way the deer had looked at him in his dreams.

The curve of Vox’s grin is annoyingly lacking in its sharpness, the Radio Demon notes. He is not interested in whatever game this _television_ is playing at. 

Something more than that is off, though.

“You’re looking…” Alastor roves a distasteful gaze up and down the TV Overlord’s stature. It settles back up on his oversized face, and eventually, an oddly vibrant disturbance in the upper left corner of his screen. Odd, but none of his concern. “… Colourful as always, Vox.”

“In glorious 8k as always, baby,” Vox preens. He puffs out his chest and makes a show of tugging at his bowtie proudly.

Alastor’s unimpressed, unmoving smile is more than enough to express he has nary a clue what this means, and does not care enough to ask. 

“You’re in the way,” he tries instead with surprising patience. The Radio Demon squints just in the slightest when his gaze lands again on the out-of-place smattering of colour in what would be his adversary’s temple. Perhaps a scratch, he finds himself wondering idly. How unprofessional, undignified, unsightly.

“In a hurry?” Vox fusses obliviously. Ever striving to be increasingly more obnoxious, he plays it up and plants a hand across his own chest as if offended. Anything to keep the deer’s attention. “You deign to compliment me, but you’re not even gonna stay and chat?”

“Why would I ever?” Alastor sighs. With impressive restraint, he makes an attempt to slide the TV Overlord to the side with the end of his microphone stand, as though he were a rather large, rather annoying piece of rubbish. “I prefer keeping my evenings idiot-free.”

“Awfully funny thing to say,” the taller counters with ease. Rather than allow himself be moved, he twists his hand to capture the end of the stand, and leans in past it with a crooked smirk. “What-with the company you keep back at the hotel.”

The Radio Demon physically bites down the urge to summon as many dark tendrils as he can and rip the bastard in just as many directions right here in the street. If not for the fact one of his favoured shops is just a stone’s throw from here, perhaps he would. It would be inconvenient, to say the least, if the owners were dispatched by any sudden… violent outbursts.

His glare finds the discoloured corner of Vox’s screen again. A crack, maybe? Shame he couldn’t have put it there himself. He makes a mental note to aim the butt of his microphone stand into the dead-center of Vox’s face, should he fail to let it go within the next minute.

“Kindly step away,” the deer warns pleasantly. “The glow of that dreadful face of yours is enough to give anyone a headache.”

Vox tilts his head to accentuate his grin and ready a retort. He says something, maybe. Alastor isn’t quite paying attention. The spot shimmers under what might have been a glitch.

It’s a bit like having a piece of food stuck in one’s teeth, Alastor decides. His gaze tracks the discoloured corner more than Vox’s actual expression or movements. Glaring, ugly, hard to ignore. Not unlike Vox himself, he muses, but it is an inexcusably unpleasant, distracting addition to an already odious individual.

Irked his attempts to keep the shorter engaged have clearly failed, the TV Overlord reels back with an exaggeratedly frustrated, wordless groan. 

“The fuck is wrong with you today?” He grouses. Abandoning his prior intention to push his luck by yanking on the microphone stand, he instead shoves it back toward its owner. He raises his speaking volume by a notch, places his hands on either of his hips, leans in again, and tilts his screen. Theatrics, all of it, even if it hides a shred of genuine hurt. “Got your head in the clouds or something. Am I that irresistible? Finally giving into my _alluring charm?”_

“Hardly,” the shorter allows himself a low, distorted laugh. He maintains a disinterested, unbothered air by tidying the sleeve that had been disrupted by having his microphone pushed back toward him. And yet, he can’t help but glance back up.

Eventually Vox takes notice of the Radio Demon’s ever-so-slightly misplaced gaze, and his expression flattens. “What is it?” He blurts impatiently. “Do I have a smudge on my screen or something?”

Alastor hums in mock-consideration. The inner joy of seeing his rival’s momentarily ruffled behaviour is more than enough to return his good mood. Oh, how he _lives_ (or whatever closest approximate) for these inevitable moments. It makes the mediamonger all the more delightful to toy with. Still, he notes, Vox is clearly off his game today—Quicker than usual, at the very least. If it were anyone else, it wouldn’t disappoint him nearly as much.

“I thought you were trying out a new look,” he coats his venom with a merry smile. “Who am I to judge? You always _were_ atrocious with your fashion sense.”

“That’s cold, baby.” Vox complains dully. By now, he has fished a kerchief from his back pocket, and unfurls it with a single snap of his wrist. To add flair to his show of cleaning the side of his screen Alastor had presumably been eyeing, he mimes the appearance of a sad, dejected, sobbing household appliance. 

Act or no, it’s a look Alastor quite enjoys. His smile curls into one a fraction more satisfied.

It’s enjoyable up until it’s questionable.

For an exceptionally brief second, Vox stiffens. His act trips with a sharp, barely-audible, glitched inhale. The hand that had brushed over, and consequently discovered, the previously unnoticed damage, twitches and pulls back. In barely seconds, he recalls Valentino’s growing impatience earlier in the night—his hand, his threat, the tell-tale _glint_ in his eyes. He suppresses the urge to shudder.

Even as he rights himself with what was surely meant to be a teasing chuckle to wrap up his initial charade, none of it escapes Alastor’s notice. It’s hard not to notice, really, when someone’s expression is so largely broadcast across a face that glitches with most considerable upsets.

“A little bruised and battered, are we?” The deer sings. A technicolour disturbance _would_ be the approximate of a bruise, he surmises.

“Lucky me, right?” Vox admits as much as he makes it into a brag. “I get all the action, and what do you get? Some stick up your ass, and not in the fun way.”

Revolting, but telling. 

Surprisingly unexpected, even. 

Shockingly honest, when he thinks about it. 

He is uncomfortably reminded of a night returning to the hotel foyer—how he found a certain spider suffering from what had so eloquently been referred to as _‘work injuries’._

Alastor dodges so much as internally acknowledging the comparison in favour of continuing to rib his rival. “Do you always run your mouth when you’re in pain?”

“Maybe,” Vox responds with an unidentifiably lukewarm tone and shrug. His intention to follow up with another ‘joke’ dies before he can even open his mouth a second time. He can’t bring himself to even pretend he likes it. It’s been too cold, recently. 

Something about his expression is wrong, the deer notes, and not just the bruised, blurry corner. Vox’s normally squinted right eye is a fraction wider than normal, perhaps. _Sickening, how much attention he’s paid this bastard’s face to notice such a thing, really._ The taller looks panicked, maybe. A fair bit fazed, at the very least. Alastor has yet to decide if he cares enough one way or another.

The TV Overlord has taken to busying both hands with refolding his kerchief, and simply holding it not unlike a small box. He can’t quite feel its texture, not really—not in the way other demons can, but he can feel the anxiety and alarm bubbling in the pit of his otherwise functionally useless stomach. 

_A crack, really?_ Just how long has he been walking around with it, showing his broken face to strangers on the street? He tries to retrace his steps, but it’s all a blur. Broadcasting a completely broken screen on social media is one thing. Unknowingly parading around even so much as a fracture is another, and it strikes a nerve similar to whenever Valentino manages to post about it before he can. It strips away any power and control he had of the situation, of _his_ situation.

Humiliating.

The realisation he has, on some level, gotten so used to enduring this particular brand of pain enough to have simply not noticed a crack for hours hits him all at once.

Disturbing.

Alastor regards him with an equally odd expression; a mix of something somewhere between expectant and mock-sympathetic.

Terrifying.

“Would you like me to break the other side?” The Radio Demon finally asks, almost too hopeful.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Vox says plainly. He’s used to putting up fronts, now is no different. In seconds, he rekindles his usual air and obnoxious flair for the dramatic. He bends his frame as his kerchief is returned to his back pocket, and makes an easing gesture with his free hand. “Let’s just call it a truce for today, how’s that?”

Alastor’s gaze lingers on the damaged corner for just a moment more. “I’m disappointed,” he confesses with a bite of condescending sarcasm. “I would’ve enjoyed twisting your arm more while you’re down, but I’m on short time, and you’ve already wasted plenty of it.”

Despite himself, a twinge of what might be insult or just plain _hurt_ runs through the TV Overlord’s circuits, and he smothers the compulsion to hide the crack behind his hand. He makes an attempt to play it all off with what he hopes is an exaggeratedly insincere look of dejection. His tone, by comparison, drops too low and too flat. “Can’t you have sympathy for me just this once?”

“No,” the deer answers sweetly, and turns on his heel.

The modern-day fool still refuses to move, it seems. He may as _well_ find another way around. 

Vox struggles to process the past ten minutes. The middle of the street, however, is not the place for it. He veils the better part of a scowl and the offending corner of his screen with his left hand, and finally remembers his legs.

Alastor goes about his night. Though slightly behind schedule (if he ever had one), and though his smile is slightly more tight than normal, his errands (if there ever were any), are soon finished. 

Even as the hotel doors close behind him, the sight of a technicolour smear under a crack in Vox’s screen will not leave his mind.


	3. Unbothered, Probably

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alastor mulls over just why seeing a crack in Vox's screen might bother him. He'd rather sleep than deal with something like emotions, actually.

Alastor is not one to overlook minor details unless it’s convenient for him. He has taken notice of this one, but try as he might, he cannot put it out of his mind. 

Husk is not one to willingly get himself involved in things, in general. Yet even he can’t ignore the intense implication of a _scowl_ that has overshadowed the Radio Demon’s usual smile. 

If it weren’t so concerning, it would almost be impressive.

“Damn,” the cat mumbles with some hesitancy. He’s half-turned behind his bar, holding a side-eyed gaze on his solitary patron, keeping his claws busy by cleaning a glass that is most certainly already clean by now. Cliché, fitting, comforting. “I’d hate to be the poor asswipe who pissed _you_ off today.”

“Vox,” Alastor supplies flatly, and it is not entirely a lie.

“Ah.” The name alone explains plenty. Husk assumes, like it has been so countless times in the past, Alastor will elaborate in a tirade of narrowly-avoided curses and venomous complaints without need of further prompt.

The Radio Demon remains alarmingly silent. Minutes, agonisingly devoid of complaints, pass before Husk realises it is unlikely to change. If anything, the cat notes a certain rise in buzzing static in the atmosphere, a deepening crease in his company’s brow, and the uncharacteristically tight grip on his more-than-half-full glass. 

He deems now a good time not to get involved.

“Look, I’m sure _whatever_ happened between you two this time around will blow over soon enough. Just take it easy,” Husk finds himself saying automatically, regardless. He sends a pointed glance downward to the deer’s hand, and recovers dismissively, “I don’t need you shattering one of my good glasses.” 

His abnormal behaviour brought to light, Alastor’s attention snaps abruptly back to the present. He withdraws his hand as though the glass had burned him, and the dark static tones evaporate with a tapering screech of a gramophone needle sliding from its place. All a bit _too_ abrupt. 

“I’m sure it will,” he grates at last. A bit too reluctant, too distracted, too quiet. 

Husk eyes him for a moment lasting slightly too long for Alastor’s liking. The cat has traded his twice-cleaned mug for a bottle of swill, and eventually retracts his scrutinising gaze to pry it open. He suppresses the urge to ask after his old ~~friend~~ ~~acquaintance~~ business partner, opting instead to leave the conversation with an amount of finality. “Right.”

Never one to be dissuaded by uninvested replies, especially when conversing with the notoriously insincerely-dismissive Husk, Alastor, as always, has the option to continue the conversation unabated. For the second, but no less distressing time in under an hour, he chooses not to. 

Right.

Husk drowns his curiosity in cheap booze. 

Alastor festers in silence. 

He makes it barely another five minutes before he, without a word, and more troublingly, leaving his drink unfinished, retires to his room.

\-----

He reaches as far as the first flight of stairs before he foregoes the need to walk the full length of the hotel. Perhaps with a flicker of irritation with himself for showing any amount of oddity to one of the few demons who can almost certainly identify it—perhaps with a pang of revulsion at himself for even being bothered in the first place and plagued with a gnawing sense to hide away any further potential _weaknesses_ —he simply materialises behind his own door.

The walls here have known a number of his darkest secrets, his most conniving wishes, his most bloodthirsty desires. Tonight they know his resentment, his frustration, and most recently, his subconscious uncertainties. 

Alastor finds himself pacing the length of his room, spouting mumbled curses between snippets of thoughts. At best, it sounds like a stream of vitriol and seething distaste for his obnoxious rival. At worst, it sounds like attempts to remind himself of that repulsion.

“What do I care what sorts of trouble the blasted fool gets himself into?” He asks the darkened corner as though it may provide an answer. 

Even his shadow, lurking on the far wall and distinguishable only by the faint glow of its facial features, has none. It looks worried, maybe. Its hollow eyes have an anxious tilt to them, its hands presumably twisting, unseen, in front of its torso. Worried for its master?

… For Vox?

The deer turns on his heel and paces in the other direction. He keeps his microphone stand nestled in the crook of his elbow and inner shoulder, and his free hand nurses his temple as he thinks. 

He entertains the idea the TV Overlord had merely been playing him—surely Vox only bothered to appear before him tonight, intentionally, with a crack in his screen, to make Alastor lower his guard, right? Surely the mediamonger is, in his own right, a master of acting and facades, no? But to go so far as putting a crack in his own screen…? His reaction to ‘finding’ it had seemed all too visceral, all too real. 

“I’m sure I wouldn’t object to having put the crack there myself,” Alastor hisses wistfully. “If nothing else, I’m certainly only frustrated I _hadn’t_ been the one to.”

He thinks, briefly, of how he would have instead preferred to do far more damage than just a small, single crack. 

The image in his mind’s eye of Vox’s shattered screen is abruptly replaced by the bruised face of Angel Dust. His memories provide him with the tone of feigned nonchalance as the spider, legs curled up on the foyer sofa, had spoken; _Didn’t think ya cared, Smiles! It’s just a work-related injury, no big deal._

_Lucky me, right? I get all the action, and what do you get?_

The Radio Demon barely chokes down a gasp and goes rigid. He forcefully reins back the train of thought and memory, berates himself for even subconsciously entertaining such ridiculous a notion as _sympathy._ To be worried for someone, his _rival,_ no less, is nothing short of a second-death wish. 

The idea that being in the Angel’s company so often—seeing him as his responsibility on some level—has introduced him to such a _useless_ emotion nearly makes his stomach churn.

The self-realisation is far too specific to be coincidence, and it drains him. Alastor sees himself to a sit in his desk chair with a weary, loathing sigh. In passing thought, he wishes to resent Angel for inciting such an asinine notion in him, wishes to see the entirety of Valentino and Vox’s domain razed to the ground for making him deal with such an abhorrent concept.

“I’m not going to accept this,” he tells himself. 

His shadow tilts its head quizzically, unnoticed. _Not going to accept_ potentially _feeling even a_ shred _of sympathy, or Vox’s uncomfortably familiar injury?_

“He can take care of himself,” Alastor spits. 

_Angel Dust, or Vox?_

For perhaps the first time since inserting himself as the hotel’s benefactor, the Radio Demon resigns himself to sleep. His shadow chitters—laughter, or perhaps reflecting its master’s burdened, anxious energy—as he all but drags himself from his chair, finger-snaps himself a change of nightwear, and drapes himself across the duvet of his bed.

He assures himself he needs the down-time only to reset his thought process.


	4. Still Not Fazed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vox reflects on his lot in (after)life.

For all his theatrics, advertisements, and public appearances, Vox is a private man. 

For as much as he puts up fronts and facades, he is an open book.

And so it is unsurprising that, as he stalks his way back to his penthouse damn well near midnight, a few heads turn in his direction. 

“Keep your mouths _shut,”_ he tells none of them in particular as he passes through the foyer, hand covering the damaged corner of his screen. “I hear anything about this tomorrow, and you’re all _worse_ than fired.”

The meager threat (or defensive pout, perhaps) is overkill, maybe; overcompensation for such a small amount of damage in comparison to the many occasions he’s had his screen completely broken in. 

But there’s a difference, Vox tells himself as he steps past the grand elevator doors whirring closed behind him, between having himself done-in in a respectable fight, and Valentino’s _vandalism._ The results of the latter are rarely, if ever, observed directly by anyone but the delivery imps who so often supply him with replacement screens—and that is only while he waits behind the closed door of his penthouse. 

It’s observed by no one, save, of course, for the millions who see the occasions in which he posts about it for the sake of _ratings._ Or, regrettably, the instances in which Valentino beats him to it.

Vox is a man who likes to be in control, and he has long since lost control of the situation. 

As the doors open to his floor, as he crosses the threshold into his suite, he finds his energy is long spent. He hasn’t a reason or enough care to turn the light on when he enters his bedroom. 

The darkness is comforting, almost. He isn’t sure what he needs to be comforted from.

It slows the pace of his thoughts, but only just. He mulls over just how long he _hasn’t_ been the one in control. It’s been far longer than he initially assumed, he resigns himself to understand. Perhaps the moment Valentino had shown all of Hell his broken face—Or perhaps the moment Vox himself had chosen to do the same on a different occasion, in some attempt to wrest that control back, to make it look like he had always planned for it. Perhaps even before then: the very moment he tangled with Valentino the first time, some large part of his own identity, worth, and relevancy, had been immediately stripped.

He is rarely ever plainly _TV Overlord Vox,_ who controls the city’s power grid, who provides the name and face for multiple brands besides. More often than not, he is reduced to _something_ in relation to Valentino. _Valentino’s_ lover, _Valentino’s_ business partner, his ‘sugar daddy’, his sometimes-even-far-less than whatever might be considered a ‘lover’ in Hell. If anything, he is seen as the moth’s plus one, rather than his own individual. 

Valentino first, just as it always is in their mockery of a relationship.

It’s as it should be, maybe. The mediamonger behind the scenes, operating the camera, despite his overwhelming presence in advertisements. Good for nothing but being a dashing prop, the arm candy of a pimp whenever it matters. 

Completely backward, when he thinks back—his plan had originally meant to have it the other way around, to use Valentino as a source of interest to boost his own popularity and influence. It had been a good plan, maybe, and worked, mostly, until he possibly, just perchance, genuinely fell for the moth just enough to believe they could’ve been a proper couple. 

A terrible sham, his would-be love after-life. A laughable soap opera, made far more public than he intended, and for all the wrong reasons. His own ploy for clout, turned on its head, leaving him bested at his own game. His own script taken from him, ripped apart before his very eyes, rewritten. His own independence taken into question, twisted into apparent reliance. 

It’s what he deserves, really. He could’ve put a stop to it at any time. Should have. Still could. 

Right?

If Valentino were out of the picture, _TV Overlord Vox_ would still be relevant in his own way, right? Vox could manage on his own, as he always had before.

… Couldn’t he?

For as much as his existence is intrinsically tied to Valentino now, for as many times as the moth has told him he wouldn’t be half as successful if not for him, that he _needs_ him, _could he?_

Vox kicks off his shoes, lets the sound of them clattering against the leg of his coffee table take the place of his frustrated groan, and sees himself to a heavy sit on the firm sofa overlooking the city below. On some subconscious level, perhaps, he avoids his bed. Though it may be physically clean, it is tainted by the night’s earlier activities, too soon to be anything but a chilling, uncomfortable reminder.

He gives himself a moment to simply decompress, to close his eyes and breathe, to regain his composure. Only then does he finally fish out his phone, and place an order for a new screen from his shop. 

Then he leans back, settles in again, and waits. He waits, as he always does, away from prying eyes, but the damage has already been done—in more ways than one.

To fill the oncoming silence, he retreats to his thoughts. He considers ripping into Valentino, considers tracking him down, giving him a taste of his own medicine for once. If he were to fry him enough that it would strip his other antenna down to a pathetic bare-branch figure to match the other, would it be comparable? Would it make up for the years of turmoil the moth has put him through?

Vox finds for once he doesn’t want to think of violence, backhanded snipes of commentary, or schemes of retaliation. He is too tired, too beaten down, too cold. More than anything, he wants change, wants the warmth of a gentle spring. 

It always comes back to the same thing, these days. 

Somewhat deliberately, his thoughts turn instead again to Alastor. He recalls the deer’s more recent expression; one of, even if intended as mocking condescendence, _sympathy._ With a pained, closed-mouth sigh, Vox sinks farther into his seat, and wishes it had been genuine.

Such a fantasy is tormentingly sweet, and so painfully preferred. He wishes Alastor would round the sofa unexpectedly as if he too had always lived there. Wishes he would approach him as a lover might, and with concern, notice his weariness and injury. Wishes he would, with tender care, settle into his lap, and trace his claws along his bruised screen with a soothing croon.

It lulls him into a state of calm. Calm enough he almost forgets his pain, almost forgets just where he is, when he is. 

He opens his eyes, and forgets to breathe when he finds no one there to block his view of the ceiling. No Alastor. No concerned gaze, or gentle hands soothing his pain. Not even Valentino, whose presence Vox would almost tolerate, almost—the moth’s sneer and never-takes-no-for-an-answer attitude and all—if it meant not being alone in this moment. 

Hell is Hell for a reason, he accepts. It is certainly Hell to have millions upon millions at his fingertips, and exactly no one to care for him. Static prickles at concentrated points behind his screen. He swallows uselessly, and lifts his gaze higher to the ceiling to will it away. 

The pain of that particular fantasy breaking and giving way to such a stark reality is, in this moment, far greater than even major damage done to his screen. 

It hurts, _it hurts._

A knock behind him interrupts his spiral into self-reflection and misery, and he sees to it that his vulnerabilities are immediately, if temporarily, forgotten.

“Leave it by the door,” he blandly instructs, with a tilt of his head, to what is no doubt the delivery imp outside. “I’ll get it.”

It’s odd, he catches himself. The delivery imps are often the sole exception to his rule—his preference, at least, that no one see his damaged screen directly. He wonders, then, why he allows these small nobodies a peek at something he would normally consider shameful. 

Much like now, where he wagers _shame_ is what keeps him from approaching the door as is routine. Shame he has allowed it to become routine at all, humiliation he has allowed himself to become so affected by so pathetic a thing as _loneliness,_ and, heaven forbid, **_pining_**. How pitifully adolescent, he reminds himself.

It takes the sound of pitter-pattering clawed feet retreating down the carpeted hall, and the passing of another few minutes, before Vox bothers to move again. A growing inclination to wallow in self-pity for that loneliness keeps him melted against the sofa, but what finally motivates him is a cure for the nagging dull ache pervading the corner of his screen. To have been made aware of the damage had been a curse in more ways than one.

By the time he reaches the door, the delivery imp is long gone. Vox leans halfway through the threshold, glances up and down the hall, checking to be sure. Empty, as much as his room.

Disappointing. 

With a sigh, he settles his gaze on the lone box leaned against the wall beside his doorway. He regrets, somewhat, having shooed the imp off—damage or no, it would’ve benefitted him just to see another face, maybe, if just to quell his chilling isolation for barely a moment. Maybe he would’ve held the poor employee up for a few minutes, netted them in with conversation they would’ve been obligated to politely uphold.

He wonders, then, how that would be any different from interacting with the faceless nobodies who flock to his Voxtagram posts—infrequent as they’ve become. Fleeting exchanges, ultimately unimportant, impersonal, and meaningless, apart from the brief respite it grants him from himself. 

Is it really fair to refer to them as _nobodies_ if he craves their attention, too?

He begins to see the correlation, and a fizzling pop of glitchy static emanating from his screen gives away his growing stress before he can even register it coming. With a frustrated scoff at nothing but himself, he grabs the delivered box and drags it inside, past the bed, back to the sofa. 

Through his work to gingerly replace the glass of his screen—a skill he has by now perfected alone and made performable on mindless autopilot—he thinks. He thinks of his embarrassingly desperate, by comparison, attempt to garner Alastor’s attention earlier; of his tendency to doggedly pursue commentary from _anyone at all;_ his routine of, normally, interacting with the delivery imps at least just for a moment during such a questionable time.

It almost always follows in the wake of some upset spurred on by Valentino, made worse by his chilling _winters._

His pursuit of attention had been something that followed him from the living world, this he knows. And yet, Vox finds, as he clicks the glass into place, and leaves his hands hovering near it as his distant, pensive expression flickers back to life behind it, it has only gotten worse with time. 

The deeper the chill, the more isolated he becomes, the more desperate he is to fill the gap. All the while, it drives him to think more of Alastor, to further wish things were different—wishes more fervently than he realises, that the deer hated him a fraction less. Less enough, at least, that he would not so surely delight in putting cracks of his own in his screen. 

More than anything, he has become irreparably tired. Tired of being the butt of everyone’s joke, tired of his own face being a convenient target for one. 

Hell is Hell for a reason, though, and his schemes in life and even death have certainly earned him his punishment. How many years has it been? How long is he expected to put up with it? Is an eternity of self-doubt and isolation really all he has to look forward to?

He begins to understand why Alastor would throw in his lot with that oddity of a hotel.

In death, he has aligned himself with the wrong side. An ironic twist, to go from the man in life at the top, in total control—to under the heel of a moth in death, yielding at every turn, bending at every whim, muted in the backstage of his own function. 

Vox lowers his hands onto the sofa cushion on either side of him, and stares, with a fresh screen, down at nothing in particular on the coffee table in front of him. 

For minutes, he can do nothing but stare. 

He’s so tired. So tired. Exhausted beyond what a single night’s rest, or even a year’s worth of nights’ rest, might make up for.

In the absence of a pair of ears to hear him, he complains emptily to an equally empty room. 

“This sucks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally had no idea where I wanted this story to go, and was almost content to leave it here. I figured even if I left it open-ended, the pining and introspection might be worth enough to post, but everyone's interest quickly motivated me to dig deeper into it. And boy, as a victim of narcissistic abuse myself, has it become a cathartic monster.
> 
> I have another four chapters already drafted, and plan to reach at least ten overall, so I'd like thank everyone very much for your feedback so far. It means a lot to me!


	5. Mixed Signals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alastor wants information. Angel Dust has it, sort of. They come to an agreement to report any relevant information about Overlord Vox going forward. This can only go well.

Alastor is not one to doubt himself, much less ask the advice of others.

And yet he finds himself looming in the presence of Angel Dust, the both of them going about their business in the Hotel foyer. 

The spider sits languidly on an old couch, distracted from his reading material, to instead fuss over a bit of uneven fur under the hem of his glove. The Radio Demon keeps himself artificially occupied with cleaning the embellishments of his microphone stand a few paces away. Every so often, he fabricates an excuse to move wordlessly closer in the the spider's direction. 

There eventually comes a point in which he is unable to delay his intentions without further suspicion.

“Angel,” he begins politely. To someone who knew him better, it may even sound somewhat unsure.

Angel is not one of those demons, not yet. Instead, he shoots him with a wink and a snap of his claws to accompany a finger-gun motion. “That’s me. What can I do ya for, Smiles?”

Alastor pieces the words together as though having to work poison between his teeth. “What can you tell me about Overlord Vox?” 

It isn’t advice he’s looking for, he corrects himself; it’s information, confirmation.

“What about him?” Angel regards him with a questioning, almost disapproving glance up and down. “Ain’t he, like, your rival or somethin’? _Arch nemesis?”_ The title pulls a reflexive, mocking laugh from him once he says it, and he praises himself for being a comedic genius. “Shouldn’t you know 'im better than me?”

The deer concludes he already regrets approaching, much less opening his mouth.

“It’s far from difficult to notice that he’s often in the company of your… employer,” Another set of words that Alastor, this time, chooses more carefully than simply detesting.

“Oh.” 

The Radio Demon isn’t sure what to make of such a meager, lukewarm response, even if it’s clear there’s more to follow. He braces himself, and rightly so.

The flicker of uncertainty fades from Angel’s face, and he leans in the other’s direction. With his expression now more teasing than anything else, he rests an arm atop the back of the couch to better his angle. “An’ here I thought you hated the guy. Lookin’ to finally make a move on ‘im? Why the change of heart?”

“There’s been no change of heart,” Alastor assures hurriedly, and does his best to quiet his vicious discomfort at the notion. He hopes, at least, his company isn’t right in remotely any context, and doubly hopes to confirm it. “I’m simply looking for weaknesses.”

“An’ you expect little ol’ _me_ to know any of those?” Angel questions with amusement. “Unless you mean—“ he makes a crude gesture Alastor would rather not pay any more mind to than he must, “—what he likes in bed, I ain’t got a clue, sweetheart.”

The deer’s smile tightens to one considerably more uncomfortable. “That won’t be necessary. Or appropriate, I should mention, though I’m sure you’re well aware.” 

Angel shrugs emphatically, and crosses his previously-active lower arms in his lap. “I’m just sayin’. Guy’s an Overlord, and you’re, what, pretty close ta that? You’ve scrapped with him a couple’a times, ain’t ya? Haven’t you figured out a few yourself?”

“His… face, I would assume.” Face? Screen? Whatever.

Not that Vox had ever been anything less than especially careful not to allow it be reached during any of their encounters, he recalls. Cords and wires are a phenomenal foil to any dark tendrils sent its way. 

Odd, then, that he should show up with such an obvious… blemish. 

Frustrating, almost, and it shows in the knit of Alastor’s brow, but the frustration is mired now in a nameless sense of unease. 

“Obviously, duh.” The spider keeps a steady, critical stare on him, as he shakes his head slowly in disbelief. Then he settles, seems to reconsider. “Though I guess you wouldn’t have a way of knowin’ what goes on on Voxtagram, huh.”

Alastor inclines his head, wordlessly prompting him to elaborate.

“Social media,” the spider tries, and rolls one of his lower wrists to help his thoughts along. “Think like, uhh, a newspaper!—Yeah, only it’s published in real time, pictures an’ all, but anyone who wants to can publish whatever they want, whenever they want.”

“And?” 

_“And,”_ Angel maintains, “sometimes some real juicy shit pops up. Y’know, gossip? ‘Cept these guys got direct sources, like close to real-time pictures of, oh, I dunno, a certain bastard’s face gettin’ totally smashed in by his pissed off _‘boyfriend’?”_ The last word drips with sarcastic venom, accentuated with air-quotes and a roll of the eyes. 

Alastor, on the other hand, has gone unusually silent in every way, save for the constant faint radio static looming over his person. That, in comparison, sounds slightly off-key; a grating hum, like agitated flies in a glass jar.

“What?” Is all he manages at last, tone indecipherable. 

“Oh, yeah, happens all the time. You’d almost feel bad for the guy, if it wasn’t, y’know, Overlord _Vox.”_ The taller crosses all four arms again, and slouches his back into the couch. Under any other circumstances, Alastor would nearly commend him for the amount of apparent disdain packed into the name.

“Pretty sure it’s some stupid game they do at this point. Sometimes it’s Vox himself who’s complainin’ about it—“ He scoffs, rolls his eyes again, “—like he’s gonna get sympathy outta us or somethin’, _sure._ Fuckin’ idiot.”

As Alastor processes with a troubled crease in his brow, Angel continues. “An’ sometimes it’s Valentino who posts about it, like he’s braggin’ or somethin’. Yeah, domestic abuse, ha- _ **ha**_ , real fuckin’ funny, right.” He sighs heavily, and glares somewhere off to the side. “I dunno, whatever gets their rocks off, I guess. Maybe he’s got a humiliation kink for all I know.”

This time, all the deer can manage is a questioning squint. Crude topic aside, he senses a hint of personal offense in his company’s tone.

Angel prattles on unabated, and Alastor wagers he’s always wanted to gossip or complain about it all.

“What, you think I was serious before about knowin’ the type’a shit he’s into? Either he ain’t interested in what I got ta offer, or Valentino’s got him on a tight leash. Most I can do is guess.”

“Back to the topic at hand, Angel, if you please,” Alastor redirects. 

“Right, whateva’, my point is, the guy gets his head smashed in all the time thanks to Val.” He frees a hand and fidgets it idly, as if lamenting a lack of cigarette to hold. “Unless they really are doin’ it just for show, that shit’s _gotta_ hurt. Now if we’re talkin’ battle strategies, though, why not try a gun?”

The spider whirls in his seat, grins a toothy grin, and sounds entirely too enthusiastic. “You wanna borrow one’a mine? Betcha he won’t be able to dodge a bullet with those stupid wires’a his.”

For reasons he doesn’t understand, Alastor finds himself uncomfortable. Though he can’t see it, he feels his smile has twisted into something closer to an uneasy grimace. “I’d prefer to deal with him through my own means, thank you,” he evades. 

Angel shrugs, and returns to his prior position. “Suit yourself. But don’t come cryin’ ta me when you get your ass kicked or fried again.”

Before Alastor can fully open his mouth to express his offense, Angel pivots onto a new point, his tone ever eager. “Anyway, since you don’t got any access to Voxtagram, want me to keep you in the know of anythin’ else that comes up about the ol’ bastard ‘imself?”

The offer gives him short pause. Even without his current need for investigation, as it were, the Radio Demon imagines it likely to provide valuable insight. With a metallic tap, he brings the end of his microphone stand to the floor to underline his decision. “I don’t see any downside to it. Why not?”

The spider lowers his gaze for the moment to give a cursory scroll through his phone, and adds jokingly, “That include stuff about any weird kinks, too, in case you change your mind about courtin’ ‘im?”

Alastor has nothing to say to this, and with a weary grumble, finds somewhere else to be, something else to do. Something that is not, preferably, pacing his room again, waging a war with his own thoughts.


	6. Mutual Understanding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel Dust has a heart-to-heart with Vox. Maybe it's time he changed his tune.

“How do you do it?”

Angel Dust lifts a decorated eyebrow and peers up at the TV Overlord’s reflection in the vanity mirror before him. His answering tone is far from warm, and carries with it even a touch of mockery. To have _this_ demon of all demons in his dressing room is hardly any better than being in the presence of his boss, simply by association, and provides him an edge of irritable caution. 

“Gonna have to be more specific than that, _Mista Ovalord.”_

“Y’know, with… Val.” Vox reluctantly, albeit still vaguely, admits. 

“Do _it?”_ Angel parrots the start of their already bizarre conversation exasperatedly. There’s not a goddamn chance he’s implying they haven’t _done it_ yet, and the spider refuses to believe otherwise. The amount of annoyingly conspicuous evidence to the contrary would make it an outright lie.

“Deal with him,” the Overlord corrects. He crosses his arms uncomfortably, and leans his shoulder into the space beside the closed door. The moth in question is not in the studio today, yet Vox subconsciously keeps his voice quiet and low all the same. Despite being the reigning media Overlord, he finds himself constantly wary it works both ways—that Valentino may overhear whatever he has to say about him, from any distance, or somehow find out, despite all logic.

Angel is not as skittishly mindful. If this Overlord wants to trash-talk, it’ll have been his idea, and it’ll be _his_ mechanical head, not the spider's. “Listen, Vox, I’m on the clock. My time is _valuable._ So unless you’re payin’, get to the point.”

Angel has never been one to shy away from saying exactly what’s on his mind. Though the two rarely interact personally, it’s something Vox has always admired about the spider—enough that he can even forgive the obvious lack of respect. If anything, he considers it a testament to what he wishes he could accomplish, at least when it comes to the moth. 

The very thought of being able to straighten out his spine like this and stand up in the face of Valentino, without eventually backing down, without subsiding and admitting some wrong despite having not wronged, is foreign and decadently self-indulgent all at once.

He takes it as his first lesson on how Angel _deals with Valentino,_ before the spider can even speak to the matter himself.

“Just what I said,” Vox insists. “How do you deal with the guy? His mood swings, the whole thing.”

“I _don’t.”_

Oh.

“There’s no dealin’ with a dude like that.” Angel returns pointedly to his preparations, busying himself with fidgeting his wig into a curl much more pleasant than the scowl of his lip. “Besides, how do I know you’re not gonna report back to him with whatever I say?”

“I won’t,” the TV Overlord assures, with a concealed edge of sudden panic. To have this chance slip through his hands would sting in ways that would make a second attempt far less likely. “We’re off the record. Promise.”

Tense moments pass as Angel regards him sternly, scrutinisingly, through their reflection. His infrequent encounters with the shorter demon ensure he’s unable to identify any potential tells to a lie, but _tells_ are considerably less essential when a somewhat distressed expression is plastered clearly across the TV’s screen. 

Must suck, being unable to control the expressions broadcast on his face. He would’ve thought the media monarch would be a little better than this at a poker face. Perhaps Vox thinks he can’t be seen in the mirror from his angle, the spider considers. 

Eventually, Angel relents. He groans more than he sighs, and swipes a brush from his desk.

“Fine. Ain’t sorry to say it about your… whatever the fuck it is you two are, but the guy’s an asshole.” He grumbles. “Unless you want your ass beat, it’s always _Yes Val; Of course, Val; Anything you say, Val._ Learned that lesson a long time ago. You just suck your shit up an’ put up with it.”

He adds, in a tone much darker, much more downtrodden, “Not like there’s anything else you can do about it when you’re under his thumb as much as me.”

Just as much as Vox hopes the spider can’t see the way his posture wilts in their reflection, Angel hopes the TV Overlord doesn’t catch the falter in his own expression, of putting what might be two-and-two together, of brief _concern._

“Why?” Angel rounds back critically. “Not like you gotta worry about that shit, right?” He scoffs at the notion, layers his words with an uncomfortable laugh, almost desperate to have his suspicions proven false. “I mean, you’re an Overlord for Chrissakes. Hell, you’re prolly more powerful than he is, ain’tcha? The fuck do _you_ gotta worry about it for?”

Vox’s silence is chillingly telling. 

“No fuckin’ way,” Angel breathes incredulously, alarmed. He sets his brush down and opts to turn in his chair to peer at the Overlord directly, rather than through the mirror. “You serious? You let that guy push you around? I know you two are an on-again off-again kinda couple, but…” 

The room lapses into silence for a second time, far more unsettling than the last. 

A chill runs through the spider at the implication, and his expression crumples. To know even an Overlord of such impressive stature could struggle in a similar way is slightly more than he can bear. He had taken comfort in the assumption that Vox, at least, had equal footing with Valentino—and such an assumption had perhaps contributed to his disdain for him. 

Angel finds, rather abruptly, he may have assumed too much, judged too harshly, and withers somewhat for his venom-laden tone throughout this conversation alone. 

His mind whips back to the conversation he’d shared with Alastor barely days prior. Guilt is painted plainly across his face as he recalls his own insistence the matter of Vox’s _shattered screen_ had been nothing more than an act. 

It plays directly into Valentino’s unending mind games. Of course it’d be played up as a joke. Of course it’s never a big deal, of course Vox would downplay it. Beat a person down enough times for having their own thoughts, opinions, and boundaries, and one learns to strip themselves of it all in favour of what’s _‘right’._

He knows all too well.

“Shit, Vox, I dunno what to say,” the spider manages at last. The revelation has firmly frozen him in his half-turned position, one hand gripped to the back of his chair. 

More than ever, he wishes to see the bastard suddenly grin sharply again and reveal it’s a prank, tell him he’s been recording the whole time just to get a rise out of him, but Vox can’t even look him in the eye. He realises he hasn't seen a truly alive or devious grin on the mediamonger's face in years, even from a distance.

The backlash and repercussions for falling for such a prank would almost be preferable to the apparent reality. 

“You’re not pullin’ my leg right now, are ya? I mean, all that stuff I see on Voxtagram—It’s all real?”

“I don’t need your _sympathy,”_ the shorter spits defensively. He regrets it the moment it leaves his speakers, and forgets to close out his retort with any reason, fabricated or otherwise. 

All at once, Vox finds himself wanting too much to accept the obvious attempt at commiseration and reconciliation in front of him. Yet just as vehemently, he rejects it for the sake of his pride, for the sake of maintaining his illusion of being the one in control, for the fact it’s sympathy from the _wrong person—_

“Yeah? Then why fuckin’ ask me about this in the first place?” If softness isn’t the answer, then perhaps a bit of firmness is in order. Angel rises to a stand beside his chair, his dress cascading around his heels, and faces the Overlord unflinchingly. 

In the same moment, he recalls again his peculiar conversation with Alastor, and it nags at him on a level parallel to the conversation already at hand. This is far beyond _gossip,_ and straight from the source. Adversary or not, he wonders if the Radio Demon would consider this information part of their prior agreement.

For himself, he wishes suddenly, desperately, to see at least _someone_ triumph over Valentino. If anyone can do it, it must be Vox. If Vox gets the ball rolling, maybe then he too can escape—

“You’re right.” Already, it isn’t the answer Angel expects. Vox visibly trembles, though he looks far more defensive and angered than plainly upset. The spider is unable to see that he, too, is desperate, clawing his way blindly, messily, back into any semblance of control. And with his own words, derisive, defeated, and sarcastic, it slips through his claws like sand. “Why ask a whore for advice? It’s not like we’re in the same boat or anything.”

Angel stiffens, draws in a slow, angered breath through his nose as his shoulders gradually draw into his sides. “Get out,” he begins lowly, coldly. Then he all but shouts, gestures harshly toward the door behind the offending demon. “If I wanted to get _talked down to_ today, I woulda gone to Valentino himself.”

He’d whip something at him if there were anything accessible. His wig, maybe, if he hadn’t already spent so much time styling it. His brush, maybe, if he didn’t still need it to smooth his fur the moment this _bullshit_ was over. Really, there's plenty to throw. 

But Angel is not like Valentino.

Instead he anchors his words with quivering, exasperated fury. 

“I don’t gotta take this shit from _you._ I already get enough of it from your _asshole_ of a _‘boyfriend’.”_ The word sickens him every time he uses it in reference to these two. He throws all four of his arms in a gesture of unrestrained frustration. Frustration at himself, at Vox, at both of them for their combined helplessness. “If you don’t got a fuckin’ _spine_ —If you wanna go crawlin’ back to him, _**fine**_ , but don’t come in here fuckin’ cryin’ to **me** if all you’re gonna do is blow it up in my face.” 

The TV Overlord’s hands clench, and an audible thrum of static hikes around his person instinctively. He readies to take a step forward, to start a retort, to lash out with a warning shot of electricity and burn the floor between them, but Angel doesn’t back down. The spider’s fire stops him before he can so much as lift his foot to take a step, before he can even open his mouth.

“I get it, Vox. I get how bad it sucks.” Angel growls with a tinge of defeat. “Look who you’re talkin’ to. Ain’t that why you came to some _useless whore_ in the first place? ‘Cuz he prolly fuckin’ understands it just as much as you apparently do?”

He doesn’t want to fight. He wants confirmation, an ally. At the same time, he finds a different reason to despise the TV Overlord: For all his power, for all their time spent in the same general vicinity, with the same apparent enemy, he has left Angel to rot by himself in the same misery. If Vox understands, why has he never stood up for him? Why had he never reached out to him before now?

Why hadn’t Angel?

“I couldn’t,” the Overlord balks, as if answering Angel’s thoughts. “I’ve tried—So many times, I fuckin’ _tried,_ Angel.” He looks uncertain, scared, almost, and it reflects in his tone. Resignation weighs his words down so heavily that it makes them tremble, that it makes the spider’s posture immediately deflate. “You said it yourself. Val comes first. You know how many times I’ve just taken it when he wants to fuck? All the times I got shit for saying no—ta anything, _anything_ at all?”

To say it aloud makes it real. For the first time, it is real, solid, _terrifying._ Vox all but rattles. 

The taller looks disgusted, somewhat, by the similarities their situations share. His fire dims to horrified embers. “Why are you tellin’ me all’a this?”

“Because I’m sick and _tired_ of it, Angel,” Vox pleads. “He put a crack in my screen again the other night, and I didn’t even _notice,_ I’ve gotten so _**used**_ to this shit.” At this point, he nearly babbles, paces the space in front of the door, tries to smooth back his antennae for lack of hair with trembling hands. “Do you have any idea how fucked up that is? I made a fool of myself in front of _Alastor_ because of him!”

Oh. 

_Oh._

“You need a goddamned break,” Angel murmurs, more disconcerted than pitying. He has long since lost his traction, and no longer knows how to handle the situation. It begins to settle in again, for about the third time in under twenty minutes, that it is Overlord _Vox_ of all demons is in his dressing room, first wary, now spilling his heart to him. “Look at you, no wonder you came askin’ _me_ of all people about this. Sheesh.”

What happened to the level-headed, cool, composed Overlord who never showed any weaknesses, who never lost any face?

Then again, when one’s _actual_ face is broken in so many times, perhaps it’s reasonable to understand one might lose a bit of themselves each time.

“I don’t have anyone else.”

Alarming words from arguably the—somehow— _second_ most popular demon in Hell. But perhaps that’s the problem; Valentino first. 

Always, _always,_ Valentino is first.

If not for Cherri Bomb, if not for the growing support system within the Hotel, Angel wouldn’t have anyone else either. The realisation strikes him that he may, in a way, no longer be under the moth’s thumb in the same way Vox is. Though working for Valentino is hardly any better, Angel has the occasional out, a place to hide away from him, people unassociated with him to turn to.

Vox does not. Valentino has seen to it that he doesn't.

“Not even Velvet?” He tries at last.

“You think I’m gonna involve her? Trust her? She’s practically attached to him at the hip,” Vox pauses his pacing, seems to forget to move altogether, with one hand remaining spread tensely before him, the other holding his antennae backward. Instead he laughs uncomfortably, more to himself, to the ceiling, to quell his rising panic. The sound trips and duplicates in glitches and repeated notes like a scratched CD, matching the disrupted image on his screen for how his stress has reached a critical tipping point, and the malfunction bleeds into his speaking voice. “Sh—sh—she—she'd probably nn—n-n- _knife_ me before he could even hear about it, just for thinkin’ bad about 'im.”

Just like how Angel had thought of Vox himself. 

How carefully the moth gaslights his followers as much as his victims. How carefully he selects his right-hand dogs, and isolates those mired in deepest.

“Seriously, you need to sit down.” Angel mumbles, his wariness turning to something more closely resembling genuine alarm. He side-steps away from his vanity chair, and gestures to it weakly in offer. “You look like you’re about to pass out.” 

Vox does not oblige, though he releases a thin, staggered, glitchy exhale. Sparks flicker in the dimming room. He has lost his chance, multiple times, to regain control of even this situation—lost his chance to use his own power as a fear tactic (was that a learned behaviour, or a holdover from his earthly life? He doesn’t remember anymore), lost his chance to play it cool (in the past many years, has he ever been able to play it cool anymore?). 

It feels he has, all at once, seen his afterlife as a whole crumble around him. More than anything, he has lost control of himself, and he’s dimly aware of a growing _emptiness_ where power has been lost a few blocks away in a radius, powering down like dominos one block at a time, encroaching ever closer. As his grip on himself fails, so too does the power grid tied to him. Even here, the lights threaten to go as dark as his mind. 

The spider has abandoned his attempt to focus on the larger issue. It’s too big, too much to process all at once. To have gone from demanding the Overlord out of his dressing room to instead coaxing him to relax—to go from seeing him as an irredeemable enemy to instead a potential fellow victim in barely a matter of minutes, makes his head spin. 

“What’d that be like, you passin’ out? Your screen just goes dark, or what?” He adds somewhat rhetorically, weakly, and takes a step back. The change in subject just barely, but intentionally, curbs his own unease, though it provides him with a new sense of apprehension. “Don’t think I’m gonna drag your ass anywhere if you hit tha floor, not after I just did my nails. And I ain’t dealin’ with this sparky electrical bullshit you’re doin’ right now.”

“I—I—I-I have to go,” Vox decides aloud, and finds himself turning toward the door he has unintentionally guarded for the duration of their meeting. 

The only amount of control he has left is retaining the ability to flee—from all but Valentino.


	7. A Break in the Case

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel has had enough of everyone's... everything. Alastor has just had Enough.

For the second time this week, Husk is held hostage at his own bar.

This time it is Angel Dust, leaned heavily over one of the bar stools, jaw resting in his palm. The look completes his feigned air of casualness despite his vaguely urgent tone. “You seen Alastor anywhere?” 

A second, far-off power outage all too recently, has spurred him into action. 

“Can’t say that I have,” the cat rumbles dismissively. Already he wishes he had an open bottle of bottom shelf swill, and it isn’t even noon yet. “He’s been weird this week. Don’t bother askin’ me about it, ‘cause I don’t know either.”

“Good to know it ain’t just me who thinks so.” The spider keeps his gaze held somewhere toward the grand staircase, as if hoping the Radio Demon might at any moment descend from it, and nowhere in particular all the same. “Listen, if you happen to see ‘im, tell ‘im I got some news.”

Husk’s curiosity is more automatic than genuine, reflected in his bored drawl. The roll of his eyes is implied more in his tone than shown on his face. “Like _what.”_

“He’ll know.”

Of course. 

“Look, you two better not start usin’ me as your fuckin’ middleman.” The cat fusses. “I ain’t here as your mailbox. Now either order something like this bar is intended for, or get lost.”

Finally, Angel turns his gaze back toward him. Unbothered by the old gambler’s ever-grouchy demeanour, he offers up a grin, a wink, and an exaggerated quick kiss to the air instead. 

“Love you too, sweetheart.” He straightens up to a stand, and pats the bar with the hand that had previously been propping his head up as a gesture of goodbye. “Guess I’ll be seein’ ya around.”

When Alastor does not wish to be found, he is simply not found.

And so it stands to reason that, on some level, perhaps he wishes to be found.

Eventually, Angel locates him on one of the upper floors of the Hotel. No less than tucked away in a far corner of a spare recreation room, perched on an an old, beaten-down armchair. What a pair he and that chair make, well-kept but ragged all the same.

“Hey, uhh…” Angel makes his presence known first with a clear of his throat, and a gentle knock on the doorframe in which he leans. 

The Radio Demon does not startle. He simply removes his hand from his temple, extracts himself from his headache-nursing sideways lean, and waits for his newly-arrived company to state their intentions.

Angel wrings his lower set of hands together uncertainly, despite himself. It’s been a long few days, a long few nights of thoughts—a trait shared amongst all three relevant demons. “When you said you wanted the dirty deets about Vox… How much did you mean?”

“Why, all of it, my dear,” Alastor assures pleasantly. 

“O-K. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”

Alastor regards him with a mix of expectancy and wariness. If Angel is about to share some uncouth _blither,_ he may well just send him back to the foyer. Forcefully. Through the floor.

The spider strides the rest of the way into the room, and finds an adjacent chair to fold himself onto before he begins. “Valentino’s been…” Hm. How to put it. “… It’s not a joke, Smiles. Never was.”

The Radio Demon waits. Though patient, he doesn’t like where this is going. Almost, _almost,_ he might’ve preferred one of Angel’s usual antics. 

“Unless he’s seriously pullin’ the wool over all eight’a my eyes, that shit about him gettin’ his screen smashed in ain’t a joke.” Angel crosses his lower set of arms in his lap, and rubs his opposite arm with one of his upper hands as if to stave off an unpleasant chill. “An’ I don’t think he’s lyin’. The guy nearly had a fit right there in my dressin’ room the otha’ night.” _You saw the power outages, didn’tcha?_

“He approached you directly?” The deer questions warily. “For whatever reason?”

“We got some shit in common, I guess,” Angel mumbles. It still sounds foreign, even to him. He chances a glance back up to his company with an uneasy frown. “You rememba’ that night you caught me chillin’ in the foyer? Only with my face all busted up?” He scoffs a bit to himself, about how stupid that had been, how he should’ve went straight to his room instead.

Maybe he’d wanted to be found.

The reminder, the implication, the confirmation, weakens the Radio Demon. 

Maybe Vox had wanted to be found, too.

“All too well, I’m afraid.”

“… Yeah.” For a moment, Angel doesn’t bother, or need, to elaborate. The air between them hangs heavy in near-silence for a few seconds. “Same deal. Valentino’s been doin’ it, and not just for funsies.”

Alastor draws in a slow, agitated breath, as his hands tighten where they rest primly in his lap. Oh, how he wishes he hadn’t needed to hear it aloud, or at all. How he hates how the comparison in his mind’s eye, between Angel’s battered face and a would-be scenario in which Vox’s screen is completely caved in, had been so spot-on. 

He isn’t sure how to process it. Perhaps he doesn’t at all, for how numbly silent his thoughts inexplicably are now, filled instead only with a literal radio static. 

“I know it ain’t the kinda shit you were expectin’ to hear,” Angel goes on somewhat apologetically. Carefully, he avoids mentioning the fact Vox had so bluntly name dropped the Radio Demon during the last moments of their frantic exchange; How he had found an envelope with a particularly generous bill on his vanity the following evening thanking him for his _time;_ How much it all sickens, angers, and worries him personally, to know Valentino has subdued even an _Overlord._ “But it felt like it was important to tell ya.”

“I’m…” Glad? Appalled? “… Appreciative, that you have, Angel. Thank you.”

The spider glances up, almost shocked. Has he—have _they_ —found another ally? “Seriously?” 

Alastor’s tolerance for the way this conversation and situation overall has gone reaches an abrupt end, and he makes it a point to put a stop to this gloomy, pensive atmosphere. For his own sake, naturally. To remind himself. 

To have accepted Angel—simply a patron of the hotel he supports—as his responsibility, does not mean he has any reason to care when someone else he’s known for years upon years is found to be suffering a similar fate.

Certainly not.

“Of course!” He chirps, and springs to his feet. His microphone stand materialises in mid-air to drop conveniently, preparedly, into his hold. When it isn’t there as a threat, it is always there for security in times of uncertainty. “A gentleman must always be mindful of his opponent’s boundaries. It would simply be in bad taste to aim for his face, _garish_ and so obvious a target as it is, knowing now how personal it is. I may even find a better way to twist his arm!”

“Jesus, Smiles,” the spider complains at length, watching with dull irritation from his place. For one who often also breaks the mood in some way, in this particular instance, it doesn’t sit well with him. “I guess that’s commendable for you, in its own way, but can’tcha give him a break for a little while? I mean, for the way he was pacin’ the otha’ night, you’d think he was gonna pass out on me.” _Did you seriously not see them power outages?_

The Radio Demon’s attention snaps rather sharply back down to him, smile a bit too tight, eyes a bit too wide. The end of his microphone stand taps heavily onto the floor as his head turns, and the filter layered over his voice grates with the undertone of shrieking feedback. “A **b̶ r̶ e̴ a̸ k̷ ?̴** ”

If Angel didn’t know any better, which he’s beginning to think he does, he might’ve guessed it was the ironic word choice that had garnered such an animated reaction. One that is, as he understands it, more agitated than enthusiastic. 

“Wait,” the spider catches on. “Wait wait _wait_. Are you _**worried**_ about him?”

“You jest!” Alastor laughs. His shadow laughs. His microphone laughs.

Angel is not laughing.

“Do I look like a fuckin’ clown to you?” He fires back calmly, and rises to a stand. “If you’re so worried about the guy—“

“—I most certainly am _not_ —“

“—why don’t you just go talk to him?”

As abruptly as he had made a fuss, the Radio Demon shuts his mouth. A stereo click sounds from somewhere as his jaw sets. For a tense few moments, he only regards the spider with a silent smile and stare that is wholly unreadable. At least _one_ of these oblivious-to-their-own-emotions idiots knows how to properly implement a poker face, Angel relents.

“Just go _talk_ to him,” he says again. “Sure, he’s an annoyin’ bastard, and you got every right to hate his guts, but can’tcha just, I dunno, call it a truce for now?” 

The spider adds, somewhat meekly, and rubs his arm again. “It’s what I’d want, if I were goin’ through a hard time like him. Like I _have.”_

Irony be damned, thank God for Cherri Bomb.

“He can find someone else to provide him with pity,” Alastor reminds himself, more than he tells Angel. 

“Yeah, no, he really can’t,” the spider isn’t sure why he’s telling him this. “I mean, sure, I kinda tried, but I doubt we’ll ever talk like that again. Val’s got him on a tighter leash than I thought.” _Wouldn’t surprise me if he gets put in his place if the bastard finds out about our little convo._

“No,” the Radio Demon affirms promptly and plainly. “As his adversary, it’s none of my business, I’m afraid.”

“Then why’d ya ask?” How many times is Angel going to have a conversation like this?

For once, Alastor has no witty riposte. An irritable, resigned sigh slips through his tense grin, leaving his brows knit and shoulders settling. 

Easily a minute passes. Alastor doesn’t move. Angel doesn’t break his gaze. 

“I don’t know.” The shorter demon finally confesses. 

With slight pause again, but without further explanation, he strides past the spider and exits the room. A soft breeze of magic catches Angel’s fur a moment before he turns to look toward the door—the Radio Demon has vanished.

He does not wish to be found.


	8. Spring in Autumn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vox proposes a truce. Officially, this time. Sort of.

Even in his most vulnerable moments, Vox is still an Overlord.

He is not some helpless, inconsolable damsel in need of rescue. 

Compassion and consideration would go a long way, though. Just as much as he is expected to be able to take care of himself, he is not impervious. Status and power make him no less susceptible to manipulation, abuse, and consequential weariness.

He was human once, too.

More than throwing himself into his work, these days, he takes the most solace in simply being. Simply existing—far away from his tower, from his cameras and monitors, from the studio and Valentino. 

And so he finds himself on a bench bordering a small park, not far from where he had last encountered Alastor. It hadn’t been an intentional destination, not really—the park and its winding trails within, its wrought iron fence, its decorative roses, is a simple pleasure in (after)life, conveniently in his path where he so often strolls to decompress. 

He has already been there far longer than perhaps intended, and sits with a leg crossed over his opposite knee, an arm draped over the back of the bench, and the other in his lap. People-watching had been an activity he’d taken comfort in in life, and similarly, it has followed him to Hell, where he simply watches the many demons go about their day. 

Some trip a step and double-take when they realise it is not just a TV-headed minion of his that they’ve passed, but the man in charge himself. A seldom few chitter and chatter and coyly hide behind their hand as they pass with fixed gazes. Others dodge his section of the sidewalk altogether, bumbling together with nervous energy. 

Even in his most charismatic moments, Vox is still an Overlord. 

He is not some charitable, viceless entity deserving of praise and simple acceptance. 

Forgiveness and understanding go a long way, though. As much as he has resorted to scheming and violence, he too has been subjected to the same, and power and fame—things often needed to secure safety in Hell—are not given on a silver platter. He has clawed his way to the top in his own way, faced adversities, and torn them down—all but one. 

A single falter, one wrong alliance made, has found him losing traction, left him wanting for ever more attention, growing soft, growing weary, reclusive, self-doubting, self-loathing, self-defeating.

There is always someone worse.

Hell is Hell, and every demon has fallen into its pit for a reason. Yet as he has seen, or as it has been suggested by the King’s own _daughter,_ even a curdled demon has room for growth, for redemption, so long as they have the will for it.

In the past he thought it absurd; no more than a little girl’s fantasy. The more he is worn down by and ground beneath Valentino’s heel, the more he seems to understand the appeal—of fantasies and redemption both.

He wants change, he finds himself wishing, for the umpteenth time in barely over a single week. No longer does he crave big and new ways to shock and surprise. He wishes simply for tranquility, or whatever closest approximate one may find in this literal hellhole. 

Repose. Control of his situation once more. Tenderness. _Alastor._

He sighs, almost laughably in a way one might consider _lovesick,_ if a bit annoyed even with himself, and sinks slightly into the bench. 

If not for a sudden bustle of activity in his periphery, he’d be content to loll and entertain a daydream. A group of smallish demons huddle together in passing on the opposite side of the street, and the image of Vox’s face sharpens from its slightly pixellated blur in waking from his lack of focus. He tunes his microphones in time to catch implications and gists of the strangers’ hurried conversation. 

_Must be another fight with Valentino,_ one of them’s suggesting. _Weird to see him all the way out here._

 _Lucky he is, though,_ quivers another. _What a looker._

 _Don’t get too close,_ the last warns. _Valentino gets possessive. Says Vox doesn’t give a shit about anyone else anyway. Ever see him give someone else the time of day?_

The smallest of the group catches his gaze, and bursts into a flustered mess of squeals and flails before pointedly rushing the rest of their company along. 

His fans are not his fans, Vox comes to understand. A group of three or four voices is hardly representative of an unfathomably wider audience, but it is a surprisingly succinct summary. Some swoon, others cower despite their boldness when shielded by their anonymity online. Nearly all of them avoid direct interaction with him. Hardly any regard him with respect—he himself has given his audience more than enough reason to _laugh_ at him.

The last comment stands out above the rest. If even strangers hesitate and skitter away from Vox to avoid the moth’s potential ire, to avoid some apparent _lie,_ all the while falling victim to the illusion the moth has so carefully crafted for them, Valentino’s reach stretches far beyond just what it initially seemed. Even online, a stake has been driven between Vox and those who might hear him.

In comment sections where the moth often prowls and monitors and polices, Valentino has seen to it that his _boyfriend_ is never quite tempted to engage with others, made too wary of what faults may be found in his commentary. When he is too subconsciously worried about Valentino's reaction, naturally he posts less, comments less, never _'gives anyone else the time of day'_.

In his moments of total isolation, Vox does not feel like an Overlord.

There is nothing to be gained from wallowing in public, where he might overhear further subtleties reminding him of his overall failure. He stands swiftly, startling away an unsuspecting pedestrian, and pockets his hands as he makes for the park entrance. 

It’s quiet in here, nestled within a row of trees, cut off just enough from the rush of the city street that it feels like its own mini-world. Vox wonders why, for as many times he’s passed by it, he never bothered to actually enter. If just for a moment, it allows him to almost forget the stress of work, the chill of Valentino’s winter, the absence of the consolation he so craves. 

_Almost,_ as always, is not enough.

He grumbles, sighs, lowers his gaze, watches himself pace down the stone path. At least in here, hidden within the tall hedges, rose bushes, and trees, there is no one to see him pout.

So often when Alastor does not wish to be found, he finds someone else instead. 

That _someone_ rounds a corner nearly the same instant he does, and he finds his face firmly planted into a blue, pinstriped shoulder. As immediately as the two collide, they back up a hurried step with irritable huffs and intentions to flatten whatever bumbling _idiot_ had just—

Neither of them, in their own ways, can believe their luck. 

Alastor thinks this is, quite possibly, the most infuriating week and a half he has ever experienced. 

Vox is far too amused at how comedically _romantic_ it is, and will delight in revisiting this straight-out-of-a-movie moment for months to come.

“Afternoon,” the TV Overlord greets pleasantly, and dips his torso to bow jokingly. 

“I think _not_ —” Alastor protests verbally as much as physically. Without his microphone stand already at his disposal, and no time to summon it, the Radio Demon discovers his hand planted squarely in the middle of Vox’s screen, reflexively, to stop the fool’s descent into his space. Better that than what, at a glance, could very well have been something far more obnoxious.

As reflexively as he had lifted it, Alastor realises what he has done, and snaps his hand back toward his chest. Though his permanent smile all but snarls, his glances are somewhat frantic to confirm, for some reason, that he has not damaged his rival’s… face. 

Whose expression is, for the moment, frozen in something half-wide-eyed, more generally stunned than in terror. No less utterly witless, and the image glitches minutely sideways once or twice as he processes what has just occurred, but physically intact, at least. 

While the Radio Demon makes it a point to back up another step, Vox finally comes to his senses and straightens his back with a chuckle so layered in glitches it stutters halfway through. So taken is he by the circumstances, by simply having _touched_ Alastor even by accident, it persistently trips up his audio and visual systems. Though undoubtedly giddy to have (quite literally) run into the subject of his more frequently-occurring what-ifs, he tempers his overwhelming fondness, and suppresses the nervous energy it produces. 

What a magnificent pick-me-up. 

“That’s one way to say hello,” the Overlord takes it in stride, and pulls a kerchief from his back pocket. 

Alastor regards him not unlike a deer in the headlights, half turned away, eyeing him expectantly, perhaps waiting for him to discover yet another fracture as he had the last time he did this. He wonders, too, for how mildly fuzzed the image of Vox’s face is, whether or not his palm actually _had_ caused any internal damage. 

But no stilted act comes when Vox makes a show of rubbing his already-spotless screen clean, and it seems he’s collected his image back into the usual crisp, angular one as always, sharp grin and uneven eyes and all, when he draws the cloth away. 

“You’re looking much more… composed, today,” Alastor tries warily, scanning his figure. Indeed, everything looks to be in order, clothes neat and tidy, no blemishes on his screen, no self-assuring grasping of his kerchief. 

… Why is he checking?

“Not you,” the taller notes with amusement. “Something you wanna talk about, babe?”

“I should think not,” the Radio Demon repeats, and takes another step to the side as if disgusted at or offended by the suggestion. 

The only thing truly offended here might be the rose bush behind him, and the unlucky flower who withers when it meets the side of Alastor’s hand. He hears the tell-tale crinkling of dying petals, and turns his head to glance down at it the exact moment Vox takes note of the same. 

The Overlord tilts his head to better peer around the deer’s side at the sorry sight. He half-pockets a hand again as he produces a sound meant to replicate that of a click of the tongue in pity. “Too bad. Knew it was gettin’ colder out, but not _that_ cold.”

“Nonsense,” Alastor grates, and backs up yet another step, placing himself again somewhat behind the corner of the hedge from which he appeared. “It’s hardly the end of autumn.”

What a pointless argument. His mind runs on autopilot, however, muddied by a hundred layers of _something_ in his rival’s presence, now for all the wrong reasons.

Vox, undeterred, moves forward to occupy the space Alastor has freed. “Doesn’t matter,” he says smoothly, dipping his claws beneath the wilted flower’s petals as though to examine it. He is not a fool—he knows precisely why it has died, despite his act to the contrary. “Winters come early sometimes. Saw it up top a few times, you know—back in the day.”

As the TV Overlord speaks, calm and feigning an air of distractedness, he inspects nearby flowers. Eventually he comes away with only one, clipped from its stem with a mild jolt of electricity. In comparison to its prior company, it is far more intricate, far richer a blood red, chosen perfectly to match its intended recipient. 

A Vox on his game is an infuriatingly debonair _household appliance._ A Radio Demon _off_ his game is not unlike a petulant child. Alastor wishes almost to drive his heel into the taller demon’s foot to throw him off, and introduce the end of his microphone stand—rather than his palm—to the middle of his face.

Instead, he finds the rose presented to him from a respectable distance, its stem wrapped in a familiar kerchief with an electric blue _V_ embroidered in its corner. 

“So you don’t prick a finger on any thorns,” Vox winks. 

“You’re _truly_ daft if you think I would take—“ 

“Just this once,” the TV Overlord pleads warmly. “To officiate our truce.”

The static aura around Alastor hikes noisily with his affronted scoff. His thin smile does not meet his eyes, so filled are they with contempt. “Which I recall having never agreed to.” 

“Kind of figured it was unspoken,” Vox guesses, annoyingly correct, “on account of you still standing here, and me still being in one piece.”

“Would you prefer I correct that?” The Radio Demon threatens, almost hopeful. Anything to put an end to this ongoing, confusing duet. 

And yet, despite himself, Alastor is tempted to accept the rose. Not for the sake of sentimentality, but purely interest: with the cloth in the way, would it still wilt? He lifts his hand halfway to consider, but, perhaps thankfully, does not lift his gaze to see the optimistic, fond tilt about his would-be adversary’s expression. 

The Radio Demon contemplates seizing it aggressively from him instead, if just for the sake of grazing the blasted TV’s hand with his claws. Perhaps, though, that would defeat the purpose in more ways than one.

“Keep it if you want,” Vox endeavours. “The handkerchief, I mean. Then there’s no need to worry about givin’ it back.” 

Alastor’s head is filled with nothing but blaring static, between pressuring himself to reach a conclusion, quickly, and Vox’s unreasonably _thoughtful_ amendment.

As much as the Overlord would love nothing more than to find any excuse at all to meet with him again soon, and deliberately, he knows this much is already pushing it. Failing that, the simple thought of succeeding in having the Radio Demon accept something of his, to hopefully _keep_ something of his, is enough to warm him. 

And Alastor takes it.

Vox cannot help, this time, to temper his fondness. His previously closed-mouth smile broadens into one slightly too genuine, giving a pleasant tilt and squint to his normally too-wide right eye. 

“There,” he finds himself saying, too relieved, too hopeful, to stop himself. “Friends?”

The deer prefers not to acknowledge his own impulsive decision, or Vox’s idiotic _face,_ let alone his words, and focuses instead on whether or not the rose lives the trade of hands. It does, much to his surprise, and he finds himself somewhat taken by such a mundane sight. He brings it closer to his eye-level, adjusts his monocle—without bending down to an unpicked flower, it is the closest he’s observed such a delicate thing since his arrival in Hell. 

That so simple a thing as a cloth belonging to someone other than himself should allow him so _human_ a moment—

“Stay warm, Alastor,” the TV Overlord says quietly. He savours reciting his full name for a change, free of any impersonal pet names or teasing nicknames. Perhaps out of respect, he has returned his hands to his pockets and eased a step backwards, obeying the unnecessary-to-be-spoken rules of their now-officiated truce. “Callin’ for some snow pretty soon, here.”

Oh, how Alastor despises how soft that expression is. It’s entirely too unfitting for that lurid TV screen of his. How he despises how the _gentle_ the tone used to speak his name was. He would much prefer the usual obnoxious prattle. 

He does nothing but watch as Vox takes it upon himself to depart from the conversation first for once, how he resumes his stroll past him, and soon disappears around the corner of the hedge. 

The Radio Demon is left uncomfortably puzzled, but not altogether displeased. He accepts, at least for now, that even should their armistice last for but a day, Vox has given him a fair trade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates may slow down while I focus on editing for a bit; there are a lot of little details in the upcoming arcs, so I want to make sure I've got everything in order without getting ahead of myself. 
> 
> This definitely became a bigger project than I originally thought it'd be, going from just a character study on Alastor learning how to get along with Vox, to Vox (and others) coming to terms with his situation as a whole. I have the ending planned, and it's looking to be around twenty chapters altogether depending on how long certain plot points take. 
> 
> Though Alastor and Vox are still at the core of this, I hope to bring it to a conclusion that's well-rounded and could be believable under these circumstances, even if Vox turns out to be just a regular ol' antagonist in canon.


	9. Scorching Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abuse is more than screaming matches and physical harm. 
> 
> Valentino reclaims his rightful place.

Vox has been in suspiciously good spirits as of late. 

All too often his screen’s image is lightly fuzzed from his daydreams, his smile too light. His most recent encounter with Alastor fuels him for days—a history of chance glances traded for glares, or looming overhead from TV displays to taunt him in passing, are nothing in comparison to having a simple conversation. Nothing compared to knowing the deer is capable of being civil enough to accept a rose, his kerchief, another truce.

Valentino’d be a fool not to notice. 

He’d be a fool not to have noticed the power outages, either—but matters such as those do not concern him. Certainly, it’s a nuisance to have his work stalled, and is no less infuriating, but the _why_ of it matters not.

If Vox has ever divulged, in a moment of learned weakness and hope for support from the moth, that outages are sometimes caused by emotional distress or instability, Valentino conveniently fails to remember it. If Valentino had ever figured it out for himself—which he most certainly has observed, following within seconds of destroying his partner’s face on multiple occasions—he simply feigns ignorance and does not accept responsibility. 

Valentino does not recall that stress might cause the outages until it’s useful for him.

Several times in the past has he threatened and punished Vox with violence over it rather than show compassion. _You’re better than this, Vox, it’s pathetic. If we ain’t back online in the next hour, you’re fucked, and not in a fun way._

A few times, he has switched tactics, and with loving sweetness as his bait, rewarded him with guilt. _Work stressin’ you out, baby? Try doing it without power. I don’t know what the fuckin’ problem is, but I doubt it’s as important as our shoot. Now get your shit together. You know better than to make me mad._

These days, he simply addresses it without pretenses, and defaults to chilling frankness, dismissiveness, and expectations. _You know the drill, Vox. I ain’t playin’ these games with you. Get us back online within the next ten minutes._

Vox, without fail, has ever obliged. It takes only once to have a normal upset be compounded with a broken screen for him to learn better. These days, he hardly needs to be told. Barely minutes after involuntary outages, he automatically begins to suppress his emotions, rein himself back in, and satisfy Valentino’s demands hopefully before the moth can even manage to contact him.

Valentino has trained him well, and yet his rules are ever-changing.

To see the TV Overlord’s apparent state of being swing from _barely managing_ to _managing just fine_ is unacceptable. Whether he is in high spirits or miserable, it is never the right thing for Valentino, never enough. Unless Vox’s good mood is provided by the moth himself, Valentino wishes him nothing but misery. If Vox is miserable due to the moth, the TV-headed halfwit is simply wrong.

And when Vox’s devotion threatens to wane, Valentino reels it back in, ruthlessly, ravenously, uncaring whether his sunken claws tear and damage along the way.

It is their dance, their game, one which Valentino has ultimate control over.

He changes tactics. It’s in his nature, perhaps not even a surface-level scheme so much as simply how he operates. 

Vox has suffered his intermittent disinterest long enough, instilling in him a sense of rarity and unrivaled worthiness when finally Valentino presents him with affection. He provides him with a taste, incremental, in small doses, or simply floods him with it in a landslide to keep him ever-chasing his unpredictable praise and attention. 

Much like now, where he drapes himself lavishly from behind the TV Overlord’s desk chair, spilling his upper arms over his shoulders, and snaking his lower arms around his sides to run along his torso. The sitting demon is taken by surprise, but not unpleasantly. 

Valentino preys on his good mood, toys with it, makes it instead about himself. His second set of arms trail ever lower, cascading down Vox’s hips, massaging his thigh, teasing the crease of his leg. 

Emotionally, the TV Overlord has long since fallen out of love with Valentino. Physically…

“What’s the special occasion…?” Vox questions distractedly, through a haze of mounting desire. He has set aside his work, as he always does—must—whenever Valentino is in the room, and has instead taken to reclining in his chair. His hands curl around the edges of its armrests, and he tilts his screen back just enough to peer upward at his apparently eager company.

The moth has no verbal answer for him, trading words for nestling his smirk in the now-exposed crook of his partner’s neck and shoulder, freeing him from his trousers, and delighting in his work. 

It is only when Vox’s breath has been stolen, screen tipped backwards and image fuzzy, mind clouded and judgement absent in bliss, and legs trembling from his release, that Valentino smoothly replies. 

“Let’s have a date,” the moth purrs lowly. He plants a kiss in the space of the shorter demon’s inner shoulder where his shirt and collar have been disrupted. A lower hand leisurely, lovingly, cleans him off. “Go somewhere fancy, like we used to. You’ve been too _busy_ these days.”

In his receding haze, Vox is unable to consciously identify the subtle implication—that it is his own fault the two have grown distant, and not Valentino’s winter. He mistakes it for a delicacy, a rare instance of the moth worrying after his health—a kindness Vox has subconsciously assigned to these actions, rather than having ever been explicitly told.

 _He must’ve noticed the outages,_ he thinks blearily, fondly. _He’s inviting me for a break._

Vox forgets to remember the cause of the outages in the first place.

“Tomorrow night?” He proposes calmly instead, with an edge of hope.

“Tonight,” Valentino urges, if not demands. “I’ve been lonely without you, Voxxy.”

Since the very beginning, the moth has sown the seeds of guilt, doubt, and accountability. And in moments like these, with comments so simple and deceivingly innocent in passing, they sprout vigorously.

Vox takes immediate responsibility, automatically, as he always has. Anything to keep Val happy. Anything to keep his attention focused and positive. 

The deeper the prior chill, the more that _barely-above-freezing_ begins to feel balmy.

“Tonight, then,” the TV Overlord grins, already enraptured by Valentino’s apparent enthusiasm. “I’ll make it up to you, promise.” 

“Only the best venue for us,” the moth agrees, his voice rumbling into the other’s neck. He lingers a moment more, then rounds Vox’s side, and begins to tidy the sitting demon’s clothes back in order. “Don’t disappoint me, and there’ll be plenty more of _this_ where that came from.”

Vox relishes in the attention. What a special occasion indeed. He watches, screen aglow, grin lopsided and eyes approving. It’s moments like these that remind him of why he stays, what makes the grief and upsets worth it. 

Physically, he’s still in love with Valentino. Emotionally, maybe he still is, after all.

He’s simply been too busy, that’s all. He’ll make up for it, and things will get better. Valentino will praise him, spend more time with him, continue this blissful train of affection. He just needs to be better.

The venue is, as always, extravagant. Vox has reserved out the entire restaurant for the night, rich in its decorative ambiance, lighting, and low music perfectly catered to his date’s tastes. He wears his finest suit, stylishly luxurious, and has even done his best to straighten out his stubbornly ever-bent left antenna. On the terrace overlooking the more appealing section of the city, he sits at the singular, finely-laid and cloth-covered table, ready with only the most expensive spirits. 

Valentino is fifty minutes late. 

It’s fine, he tells himself. The moth, too, is a busy demon, and their date _had_ been rather unplanned. He forgets to remember the fact that it had been Valentino himself to suggest _tonight,_ specifically.

It’s fine, he assures himself. There have been plenty of occasions in which Vox himself has had to outright object to a date at all, on account of being unluckily swamped in work at the time, and Valentino asking rather suddenly. He never knows it to be the test that it always is, meant to frame him as the uninvested half in their relationship.

It’s fine, he convinces himself. With a gaze yearning and eager, he tracks the moth’s elegant steps as he appears from the open threshold and strides onto the veranda—at least he has shown up at all. Unlike a few past occasions, where he has been plainly stood up without explanation, much less apology. Just as he never deserves an explanation, he hardly deserves being graced by Valentino’s ethereal presence at all.

“You’re so good to me,” Valentino coos, as he takes his place across from his date. His tone is peerlessly sweet; his casual, subtle accusations coated with rich honey to make them slide down without suspicion. “Waiting for me like this. Don’t plan for dinner so early in the night next time, Voxxy.”

The TV Overlord forgets to remember it never matters—whether it’s 6pm or 10, Valentino will arrive whenever it’s convenient for him.

Vox tilts his head, gaze fixed only on his date, on his gorgeous ensemble; a high-slit form-fitting dress, silken gloves, and sleek boots not quite tall enough to hide a garter. Though not terribly different from his normal attire, the moth always knows just what gets the TV Overlord. 

In moments like these, Vox forgets his troubles, forgets Alastor, and sees only Valentino. 

In moments like these, Valentino successfully rakes him back in, wraps him around his finger all over again, forces him to remember he is the only one Vox’s gaze should—is allowed—to be for.

In this moment of tenderness, of enraptured devotion, the shorter demon’s hands reach across the table and gently take hold of one of Valentino’s. Just looking at him, just drinking in his company’s extravagant attire and very presence, stirs his internal systems and heats his torso beneath his suit. 

“You’re beautiful,” he all but whispers. 

“And you went above and beyond,” Valentino counters smoothly, adoringly, with a sweeping gesture around them. “I’m impressed, babe. Real impressed. I forgive you.”

Vox forgets to remember there was nothing to forgive. 

The approval makes it all worth it. Already the TV Overlord wishes to think of ways to go even further next time, dazzle him even more, strive ever more for this praise and warmth.

For the present, he delights in personally serving Valentino’s drinks, and encouraging him to order any appetisers, meals, or desserts he wishes. No amount of expense is worth sparing for the moth’s affections. 

As Valentino indulges in his money, Vox is content to merely sit and share in his presence. Without a functional stomach, much less mouth, he is out of place at a restaurant. There is nothing for him here but to revel in Valentino’s so deliciously rarely-undivided attention, and encourage conversation. 

As it should be. As it has always been—no small amount of his comfort and boundaries have been gradually eroded in exchange for Valentino’s personal interest. Vox has with him with a champagne flute to turn in his hand on occasion; empty or not, he likes to fit in. He is lucky Valentino has yet to deny him even this, that he has not complained of it, told him it’s embarrassing the moth, that it’s unbecoming of an Overlord to fiddle with _trinkets._

For an hour, Valentino is satiated and amiable, their conversation too broad to allow his infectious seeds to sprout. In moments like this, where the two simply exist together, speaking of anything but themselves, the illusion of compatibility and love is at its strongest, and wraps Vox in a sense of false security. 

“I was starting to think you were gettin’ tired of me, babe,” the moth eventually states. 

A small tear begins to form in the perfect fabricated bliss of the evening. 

Vox sits up from his dreamy, relaxed position, and lifts the base of his display from his palm. “I could never,” he assures apprehensively.

“You could at least try actin’ like it,” Valentino sips from his glass, sets it aside, rests his chin on his folded upper hands to regard him with a woeful expression. In these moments, his tone is ever casual, never quite aggressive, but always accusatory and self-pitying enough that the TV Overlord is gradually trenched in guilt. “Away from the studio so often, like you’re avoiding me. Why do you think I got so lonely, baby? Where’ve you been disappearing to? You been leavin’ me in the dark in a couple of ways lately, it’s gettin’ kind of sad.”

The tear widens, the night begins to unravel. 

“Out,” Vox says vaguely, then grasps for a lie, a cover. “Had to gather my thoughts. There’s a project I’ve been meaning to get into.”

Valentino shakes his head as if disappointed. So many years of sown seeds, even just a gesture is all that’s needed for his partner to immediately assume accountability for some alleged wrongdoing. Heaven forbid Vox have his own thoughts, time for himself, or plans without Valentino. Heaven forbid he falter, be anything less than positive, do anything less than shower him in praise, or devote anything less than his full attention to the moth.

Unease ripples through the TV Overlord’s circuits, and he sits up a little straighter, a little less leaned toward his date. He threads together a deeper lie to mend the growing tear. An extravagant lie is far better than even an innocent truth if it means Valentino has less to find faults with. 

“A new reel of interviews. Of your molls, I thought.” He explains just calmly enough to possibly be believed. To a trained ear, the only thing to give him away is his normally lightly-suppressed accent and diction seeping through unrestrained. As his stress heightens, his control lessens. “Get more business flowin’, y’know? But I been lackin’ inspiration—“

“Baby…” Valentino begins with a purr, one part worry, three parts threat. “Talk to me next time. You know you can always talk to me, right?”

Vox offers up a weak smile in return that is one part sheepishly apologetic and three parts nervously placating. He forgets to remember his countless efforts to do just that, and how it is always met with disinterest, irritation, or obvious excuses that the moth is needed elsewhere. 

“‘Course, Val. I just get ahead of myself sometimes.” He sets his ever-empty glass down, makes a vague gesture. “Work, and all that. I’ve been busy, like you said.”

“Isn’t that why we’re partners?” Valentino leans forward, effortlessly closing the small gap the TV Overlord has instinctively put between them. With his words and actions both, he corners his partner again, blankets him in false reassurances, buries him in faults, glazes him with paltry sweetnesses that are sure to melt to nothing in barely days. “Poor Voxxy, you’d be so lost without me. You know we’re in this together.”

Vox forgets to remember he had managed just fine without a _leech_ in his previous life. 

Valentino rests both of his large, falsely delicate hands over the smaller demon’s—captures them, cages him in. He tilts his head, softens his brow, smiles a crudely gentle smile. “I love you,” he tells him. “Really love you.”

It’s a bit like throwing an ice cube into a furnace. 

_No, you don’t,_ Vox wishes to say. All at once, like striking the wrong note on a piano, like reading the one line in the script that doesn’t belong, it’s as though his trance has been lifted.

This is it, he thinks. Valentino’s summer has begun. But now that he has sampled Alastor’s spring, he wants no part of it.

He finds himself responding habitually, meaning it as much as he doesn't. “Love you too, Val.”

  
They go home. Rather, Vox finds himself with a moth infestation. 

Valentino rewards his good behaviour with a cascade of tender words and lingering touches. When the late night comes, the two retired into the TV Overlord’s bed, he overwhelms him with lust and sweetens him with after care, enough that Vox is left sick and delirious. 

Valentino smothers him with affection, leaving him gasping and wishing both for more and for nothing. Vox delights in as much as he suffers the burns of his summer, and fizzles. 

Valentino drowns him in pleasure, and he suffocates. 

Valentino enforces that his partner need no one else, and keeps him busy, mentally and physically, away from others, until he is all but spent, figuratively crawling away in a haze. 

For days, the cycle begins anew each time—it is nothing but the moth, _Valentino first,_ and Vox is left desperate for a reprieve. 

He grapples for more work, runs himself into the ground—he has that lie to uphold now, too. All the while he answers the beck and call of an insatiable moth who takes, and takes, and never gives back anything but pleasure, never quite with permission, maintaining only assumptions and expectations the smaller demon could ever want anything less.


	10. Overburdened

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a number of ways, Vox is at his limit.

It has only been two days, and Vox is exhausted. 

When one is controlled by Valentino, their afterlife can be summarised in one word: obligation. Obligation for—more often than not—sex, obligation to work, to satisfy every whim and changing ruleset. When one is not working to meet a demand made by him, they work to satisfy some hypothetical want of his to earn even a chance at his praise. 

For two days, when Valentino is not providing—demanding of him—obligated pleasure, Vox buries himself in his promised, obligatory work.

Now that his partner is running on fumes, barely able to keep up with the moth’s urges, now that his partner is busy working on some _thing_ for the moth, Valentino has had his fill of him, begins to retract his steady flow of affection, and cools, leaving him marred with the burns of his summer. 

Unable to simply exist as he would much rather do, Vox throws himself on his own pyre, trading one energy sink for another.

The room is blindingly soft and decoratively spotless where it needs to be, and dim and cluttered with props everywhere else beyond the scope of the lens. If Vox were not already so accustomed to it, he might see it as a mocking parallel to his own afterlife, his own relationship. 

He is almost too tired to care about anything, almost to the point he trembles on his feet, enough that on occasion, the wires of his mis-matched antennae shiver and clink under their own weight.

 _Almost_ doesn’t count.

“Remind me what the point’a this is again?” Angel Dust complains, breaking him from his dazed state. “We already did somethin’ like this before. It ain’t even been that long ago.”

The TV Overlord leans out from behind his camera setup, and regards the posing spider with a dull, unamused frown. “Do me a solid and stop talking for five seconds.” He chides half-heartedly. “You’re gonna make editing this a pain.”

“How’s that _my_ problem?” 

“If this doesn’t turn out flawless, I’ll _make_ it your problem.” Vox huffs. His threats are merely air at this point, hardly hot and carry no weight—not that they’re meant to. “Valentino already knows about the reels, I told him they’d be ready by the end of the week. Yours is the last one I have to put together.” 

Chatter on his end is fine, at least; the audio is to be muted and replaced with music anyway. He doesn’t worry about Valentino overhearing any of this—this is Vox’s side of the business, and once the final products are complete, the original reels are, as he promptly decides, scheduled to be burned. 

“This was _your_ idea?” Angel snaps with critical incredulity. “Ain’t you got more original ideas in that TV head’a yours than some stupid panderin’ shots and why the most fuckable demon in all’a Hell’s still fuckable?”

“Not when I’m put on the spot,” Vox responds with surprising honesty, and disappears behind his equipment to pan for a better angle. “Not anymore, anyhow. He was asking about where I’ve been, I had to come up with an excuse. Now hush.”

“And?” Angel draws his hands upward along his lithe frame. He pauses his dissatisfied commentary just long enough to supply Vox with a shot lacking the spider visibly running his mouth as requested, and plays up a sultry expression. Topless or no, there’s nothing particularly erotic about _work,_ much less an uninspiring conversation with not-quite-an-ally. “So where _have_ ya been?”

“Out,” the Overlord maintains his habitual vagueness, then amends with a shred of honesty. If suffering an obvious nervous break in front of the spider _accidentally_ had not been enough to earn him some amount of intentional candidness, then certainly nothing would. “I bumped into Alastor again.”

For all his gripes, when given the opportunity to actually _converse_ with someone, Vox is unable to help himself. Even if he were, he’d almost be too tired to care. 

“Oh, that explains _plenty,”_ Angel teases, and not with sarcasm. Not completely out of commitment, and more for the sake of implying some kind of point, he changes position. Both his upper arms slide behind his head, and he bites the claw of a lower hand as he lifts a knee.

Vox sputters, and leans out from behind the camera again with a flustered blur about his face. “It’s not like that!” 

“It’s totally like that.” The spider curves his back, tilts his head to lay his cheek on the bed, and looks the lens’s way with a playfully mocking grin. “You mentioned ‘im last time, too, sweetheart; I see you.”

The TV Overlord groans with annoyance. Whatever, at least he’s providing a few decent shots. Vox is used to things happening at his expense. “Just do your thing and shut up already. Give me some better angles.”

“Bet you’ve been keepin’ yourself _real_ busy,” Angel persists, a note longer than necessary, and provides a sensual, but pointed arch of his hips. 

Something about it, this time, strikes a nerve. Fantasising about the Radio Demon in place of Valentino had only gotten him so far, the first night. Since then, pleasure has been less of a treat and more of a chore, as it always is at the height of Valentino’s summers—or really, any time with him at this point—and he has not pursued it independently. 

Even with Alastor’s temporary softness in mind, he hasn’t had the energy, hasn’t been in the mood. Much like how he is not in the mood to deal with one-sided banter reminding him of what, to others, would surely be his laughable predicament. As Valentino had so often told him—early on, when the TV Overlord still had it in him to attempt a no— _what kind of man doesn’t want sex?_

“Damn it,” Vox sighs, static-riddled, exhausted, surrendering, behind the camera. He shouldn’t be fazed, and yet more than ever, he finds that he is. “Angel, seriously, I’m not tellin’ you anymore, I’m asking. _Please_ shut up.”

He lifts the lens, effectively calling an end to the shoot. Rather than kill the lights in the room and leave the spider to fumble about in the dark like he might have been inclined to in the past when irritated, Vox steps away from his equipment, collects the spider’s garments, and tosses them back to him. 

Angel, for all his teasing and his default provocative nature, is not a fool. He is just as able to detect the shift in the mood, and quiets with no small amount of suspicion. He catches his clothes, sees it not as a show of passive aggression, but for the neutral, almost good-natured gesture that it is, if a bit resigned. That face of the TV’s, however occasionally glitched, is far easier to read than the Radio Demon’s.

While Vox sees to his own things, ever busy with _something,_ whether it’s dismantling the camera mount or manually turning off extra lamps, Angel watches him carefully. It’s unusual, he thinks, for the Overlord to be anything less than interested—or at the very least not flustered and willing to play along, even if just a while—by the subject of his teasing. And yet, when he looks back on the evening in which Vox had spilled his heart to him in his dressing room, he recalls one key point. 

_You know how many times I’ve just taken it when he wants to fuck?_

“Shit,” the spider realises aloud, appalled. The thought already has him uncomfortably empathetic and makes his skin crawl from his own persistent memories. “Val must be runnin’ you ragged.”

If there’s one thing Valentino is good at, it’s regarding those he considers his favourites as _playthings._

The spider regrets having not kept that particular comment a bit closer in mind, regrets pushing the subject, even if it had been in good fun. He busies himself rather hurriedly with pulling his top on as though taken by a sudden chill. While he isn’t one to feel exposed, the disturbing flashbacks are an easy cause for exception.

He begins to understand, rather easily, why Alastor had become so fixated on the idea of _broken screens._

“Yeah, laugh at me about it, see what happens,” Vox mutters dryly, paying only half-attention. He steps away, pulls down a few curtains. Rather than fold them, he drapes them over the back of a divider, and wanders a few steps away while shuffling the lapels of his coat—for all his built-up stress and non-stop activity lately, his internal systems struggle to keep him cool. 

“I ain’t laughin’, Vox.” With his clothes back in place, Angel swings his legs over the edge of the bed. Despite however rightfully unsettled his thoughts have become, he keeps a casual air about himself by smoothing out the tops of his sleeves and adjusting his fluff. “Didn’t I tell you before, I get it?”

Briefly, the Overlord turns his head to glance back. Compared to his normally sharp grins, his expression now is dreary, doubting, and nearly pleadingly hopeful all at once. 

Angel doesn’t wait for a response, or more of a reason, to continue. He wants all of the words out, to get his point across, and wants out of this room. Not for the fact Vox is here, but merely to move, as though to physically escape the memory and thoughts. 

“Look, I ain’t here about to preach to you like the last time we did this. You got work to do, an’ so do I, and I ain’t interested in gettin’ you inta any trouble with Val,” he says. “’Cause let’s be honest, it’s clear you’re already in some kinda trouble.” 

He holds up his top set of arms as though in surrender, and crosses the lower set. “But I _am_ gonna tell you again: I get it. You might think it’s bullshit, but there’re times I get tired too. Work is _work._ It ain’t the same as when it’s someone who cares for ya— _really_ cares.”

Vox doesn’t dare turn back around. Angel doesn’t bother rubbing it in his face that Valentino surely doesn’t care. In their own ways, both know it far too well. 

For a brief moment, Angel pauses to compose himself. The only sound in the room is the gentle thrumming of electricity in both the old lights overhead and Vox’s own person, and the quiet whirring of hidden vents. 

“Listen big guy, I don’t got any answers for you, and I ain’t gonna stand here throwin’ a whole pity party for us,” the spider mumbles, beginning to make his way for the door. On his way, he chances a glance back at the Overlord, who has gone completely still, turned in such a way that his face can’t be seen. “… But accept some goddamn sympathy for a change.”

He leaves it at that, and Vox is left in his mock-silence as the door swings to a close.

As much as he wishes to escape the moment, there must eventually come a point where Angel admits the obvious to himself.

\-----

The TV Overlord laments his exhaustion. Though he would rather not think at all, about anything at all, Angel’s words ring in his mind ceaselessly.

When he finds it in himself to move again, the sound of choked vents and an uneven drone of static following him, his legs seem to carry him on their own down the halls, and toward Valentino’s office. 

He isn’t sure why, at first. To give him a piece of his mind, maybe. To finally call it off, to demand better treatment—already he can predict the moth’s counter for that. _Better treatment, really? As if pleasurin’ you every day, sometimes more than once a day, is **bad** treatment? Gimme a break, Vox._

Maybe not that, then. 

Some desperate reach for comfort, maybe. Either it ends with frigid nothingness, or a crack in his screen. To his overworked and fatigued mind, it’s worth a shot. 

He’ll decide when he gets there.

Before he so much as reaches for the door handle, his steps are a little more hurried, the stress has crumpled his expression, and his mind is already laser-focused on one thing: an urgent need for company, solace, and reassurance. 

When his only other source for conversation (and dare he say, consolation) has walked out on him, Vox’s sole option is to return to Valentino, far more nearly-but-literally crawling than he would like. Despite knowing the source of his enervation, habits and a deep-rooted sense of reliance are hard to break, especially so soon after the would-be demonstration that things between them are in good enough standing that he might win sympathy. 

Vox closes the door behind him, leans against it, and his sigh is barely audible under a garble of static-riddled glitches.

“You look like utter _shit.”_ The moth greets him with plain observation. He sniffs, then recoils and scrunches his expression with disgust. “Might as well smell like it, too. Is that _ozone?_ Burning dust?”

“Colourful,” Vox mutters without amusement, and creeps slowly into the comfortably-dim room as though each step pained him. He peels off his coat, tosses it with careless dismissiveness onto a nearby dresser. One extra layer of fabric gone does little to ease the four vents working overtime along his ribs.

As his would-be partner approaches, Valentino leans back into his large office chair with a disapproving scowl. He scans barely-noticeable glances up and down the TV Overlord’s person as he complains. “The fuck, Vox. It smells like a laptop that’s been runnin’ on high for thirty years straight and melting in the sun.” 

What a coincidence. 

“C’mon…” The moth grumbles reproachfully, but does not physically protest, when Vox deposits himself wearily at his feet. Instead Valentino only lifts all four of his arms to varying degrees as if to avoid touching him—one carries his cigarette holder to safety, the opposite elbow anchors on its armrest as his torso tilts away, and his lower set remains hovered at a loss for what to do. “Really, Vox?”

The TV Overlord takes his chances, leans his back against one of Valentino’s legs, and lets his eyes close. If he were brave enough, he’d tell him, even jokingly, to shut up, much like he had with his previous company. 

But Valentino is not like Angel Dust.

“I got work to do,” the moth asserts impatiently. “And so do you, last time I checked.” 

Softness and warmth are only allowed on his own time, by his own choosing. That his partner would try to initiate it on his own is a plain nuisance.

“All—l—ll the shh-sh-shoots are done,” Vox glitches. He grimaces at the sound of his own staggered voice, but is too weary to care. “Just let m-m-me have this—iss—iss— _this.”_

“What, pretendin’ you’re capable of giving me a blowjob?” Valentino scoffs. “The fuck else’re you doin’ down there?”

“Jus-s-ss—just sit—sitting here.” The TV Overlord rests his head back against Valentino’s thigh, sighs in as much of his mock-breath as his vents, and allows his own legs to gradually go limp. “Just gi—give—give me a mm—min- _minute.”_

“Like this is comfortable for me, between this fuckin’ plastic head of yours, and—“ Valentino objects, making to nudge him away with his opposite knee. Almost immediately, he draws it back to its original place with an aggrieved hiss when his shin is met with a sudden heat. “— _Fuck_ you’re hot, and not even in a nice way.”

Vox doesn’t bother answering, and chooses not to acknowledge the complete lack of sympathy in the moth’s words. It doesn’t matter. As long as Valentino allows him to stay like this, even just for a few minutes, it doesn’t matter. 

He does, for the most part, and the fleeting time does Vox well. The stuttering of his image slows, the whirring of his vents gradually quiets. He lets himself simply breathe, and his display dims a fraction as if already he had already begun to doze. 

Eventually, the unexpected occurs. One of the moth’s previously-unused lower arms eases down, and a hand is placed almost delicately atop Vox’s display as if to comfort him. 

This much is fine, Vox accepts. He knows it’s meaningless, probably, and now knows allowing the moth’s hands anywhere near his screen is just asking for trouble. But he’ll pull the last vestiges of Valentino’s summer out from him manually if it means getting just a moment’s rest and touch. 

There is no one else he knows, no one else he’s close enough to, who would tolerate this contact—however barely Valentino himself tolerates it. For all their moments of forced half-intimacy, Vox has found himself laughably, desperately, touched-starved over the years. It simply doesn’t seem to _count_ when it’s nothing more than a means to an end.

_Work is_ work. _It ain’t the same as when it’s someone who cares for ya—_ really _cares._

Somehow, knowing the action’s overall shallowness hurts more than the scorching quality of Valentino’s more intense moments, more than his over-saturation of sweetness. Perhaps it’s the littler things, the moments where Vox expects—hopes—for something so kind, and against all odds, despite knowing better, despite knowing how unlikely it is when Valentino is not in the mood, he gets it. 

Valentino’s hand, unprovoked and painfully gentle, soothing and almost sympathetic, runs its thumb along the top black of his display. 

It hurts. More than any break or damage, it shatters him like glass. An audible crackle of static chokes the middle of his screen. His systems struggle to maintain a clear image of his face as he wilts and shivers. 

“Val, I can’t—“ Even with his glitches quelled, he stammers pitifully. He isn’t sure what he speaks to, whether it’s his own unsustainable pace of his doubled-up work, or their sham of a relationship. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m so tired.”

If Valentino is kind enough to soothe him with so gentle a touch in this moment, he hopes, pleads, he’ll listen and provide him with words to match.

“What did you expect after fuckin’ around for so many days?” The moth responds coolly, as though there were no other answer or explanation. “You’d have to make up for it sooner or later.”

How stupid of him to forget who he's dealing with. 

Never mind the fact Vox had already told him—lie or not—that it was time spent for Valentino’s sake, never mind the fact Vox already has something to show for it, never mind the fact he’s made up for it—paid for it—a hundredfold. 

There is no winning with Valentino, he comes to understand for the millionth time. Nothing is ever good enough for him.

His bitter coldness stings, his unexpected warmth aches. If Vox didn’t know better, if he didn’t know it would be more likely to come out as a resigned dry-sob, he would let himself laugh. Instead he bites it down, rattles, lays his hand atop Valentino’s. He isn’t sure if he wants to turn his claws in to draw blood, or beg for more sympathy, for mercy.

It’s fine if he pretends he didn’t hear. He’s had his moment. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.

He isn’t fazed. 

He just focuses on breathing, on keeping his temperature down, on holding the hand he doesn’t deserve to hold. 

“Babe, if you’re this stressed out, maybe you ought to take a break,” Valentino comforts awkwardly at last. “Take a day off. Go somewhere.”

At first, Vox forgets to recall the criticism he’d received for nearly the same thing not minutes earlier.

Then he remembers. He remembers, and sits up, away from Valentino’s leg, and cradles his own head as it tips forward. He recalls the last instance of this—where he had so foolishly fallen for the moth’s sweet offers to take a day, only to be reprimanded later for not _being there_ for him.

Everything is always a trap. Even if Valentino does not plan to in the moment, he finds a way to make everything Vox's fault.

“I can’t,” he admits quietly, weakly. Then he stands, with effort, and strengthens his voice, layers it with as much resolve as defeat. “Your reels are due in a c—couple of days.”

The power cuts the moment he exits the building. Not for lack of control due to stress—certainly, there’s plenty of that, too—but out of spite, and fatigue-fuelled lack of impulse control. Valentino will have his precious electricity back in under a minute, _certainly,_ but not without losing his place or whatever progress, first.

 _You petty fucking bastard,_ the eventual text reads. _I help calm you down, and that’s the fucking thanks I get?_

Vox disregards it just long enough to mimic how long it might take to be engaged with some third party, and passes the blame off on a mechanical failure rather than his own. 

Perhaps this time, he thinks, he deserves Valentino’s surely imminent winter. But at least he will have reminded himself he is, at least when driven so far beyond desperation that he lands on numbness, capable of remembering himself.


	11. Understated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alastor may not be, but Angel is tired of lying to himself.

Alastor struggles to come to terms with the way things have changed. 

Vox is still his rival, he thinks. No, he decides. The Overlord is not under the Hotel’s roof—and is therefore not his responsibility. It sickens him in some part, too, that he must specify a reason to convince himself at all. As much as he is loathe to admit it, having _Angel Dust_ as his charge, by association, has irrevocably altered his perception of such matters. 

Of all the changes and oddities around him in his afterlife now, Angel has been one of the more recent notable constants. Angel’s presence, his ridiculous mannerisms, his hardly-a-secret occupation, and his consequential _work injuries,_ included.

By comparison, one of the original notable constants is Vox. Whose qualities, as he has been forced to learn, are not much different.

Alastor was not—is not—one to care for others. It is quite difficult to care for the wellbeing of others when he would sooner devour them, or use them as stepping stones. 

To let harm befall someone considered his responsibility, however, is unacceptable, and threatens to tarnish his own image. Vox is not his responsibility, and therefore, it should not matter what happens to him privately or otherwise.

Alastor is not—was not—the type to appreciate delicate things such as flowers, not really, not genuinely. Though their idea may be appealing, he has no use for them outside a simple aesthetic.

A rose wrapped in a light blue embroidered kerchief lays half-wilted on his desk. 

He has been unable to trade its wrapping for a vase, not without surely killing it in full, and so there it has laid. It remains there as a curiosity more than a sentimentality, he tells himself. He wonders how long it’ll last without his attention. Already it looks weary and sad. 

He recalls how it has already been a handful of days. A few days into their supposed truce, and yet, for all its irony, Alastor has suffered nothing but radio silence. He struggles to understand why. Was it nothing more than a ploy? A trap to placate him? Though it has never happened before, he wouldn’t put it past the TV Overlord to present him with a novelty, simply to throw him off his scent for a day or four. 

Why then had some small part of him expected—wanted—anything different? Was it not enough simply to bask in Vox’s respectful silence? Is it the silence that unsettles him, or Vox’s absence? How is he able to determine the fool’s state, if not by seeing his face? … Why should it matter what his state is at all, if he has already decided Vox is not his responsibility?

Alastor forcibly quiets his overactive thoughts with a sharp tap atop his desk with his claws.

Distance does not beget fondness, he determines. It simply cultivates resentment.

The more time goes on, the more the Radio Demon considers taking the rose in hand and crushing its petals in his claws as it shrivels, if for no reason at all other spite, for the fact that it had been gifted to him by his repellent _rival._

He is never sure what keeps him from quite going through with it. Perhaps the many attempts he’s made in the past to delight, fleetingly, in the simple human pleasure of observing any rose at all. Perhaps out of respect for the fair trade Vox had given him—keeping his distance respectfully in addition to providing him such a _moment_ at all, in exchange for the deer merely, temporarily, foregoing the desire to shred him in a brawl. 

Alastor is a man of his word when he means it. He is not one to betray the terms of an agreement, but it is rare their armistices last for more than a few days as it is. He wonders if—why—this one should be any different.

Irritating, the more he looks at it, the more he really considers. Though originally an interesting novelty, the impulse to tear into Vox when they bicker, at least, is not one so easily ignored, especially now. It feels more like a trick, now that it has been days of nothing, now that the distance tempts him to rip Vox limb from limb verbally, and disqualifies it as any _fair trade_ he is interested in.

How dare the blasted _television_ make him experience something so unreasonable as doubt and worry—how _dare_ the Overlord cause him to wrestle with these thoughts at all.

These few days later, he finally concludes that he has had his fill of _human delicacies_ in a way far different than he might normally indulge, and is well finished with this charade. 

As though it were a poison-drenched object fished from the trash, Alastor pinches the very end of the rose’s stem, still carefully wrapped in Vox’s handkerchief, between the tips of his thumb and index claws. He carries it upside down, indifferently, down the many flights of stairs, into the Hotel foyer. 

He considers depositing it on Husk’s bar and allowing the cat to dispose of it however he will. He considers giving it to Charlie, just to toy with her—it _would_ be rather entertaining to see what she makes of receiving a half-dead rose. Potential amusement aside, he quickly discards the idea when he realises she would be all too likely to corner him into talking about his _feelings._

Alastor has had enough of feelings to last him an after-lifetime. 

Before he can get even halfway into the foyer, it is Angel Dust who intercepts him. The heavily accented voice rings out from the side, accompanied by a clatter of high-heel boots. “Whatcha got there, Smiles?” 

Alastor turns, eerily without stepping, to face his approaching company. “A nuisance,” he sings, the merry tone laced in thinly-veiled bitterness. How stupid of him to have kept the reminder of Vox’s now-absence for so long. How dare Vox be _absent_ at all.

“I dunno about that, looks more like a flower to m—“ The spider gasps, altogether too dramatically, and bends to inspect it closer than is necessary. For all his attempts to remain neutral, Angel had seized the chance to take his mind off the TV Overlord and their uncomfortably similar circumstances. Instead, he is greeted with the perfect opposite. “Is that _Vox’s_ emblem?”

The Radio Demon clenches his jaw and reminds himself not to take his frustrations out on a patron, least of all _this one._ “Why do you think I’m on my way to dispose of it?”

“Harsh,” Angel clicks his tongue in mock-pity. He forces down his pang of anxiety at the reminder, the sudden conclusion he’s quickly arriving to, and plays up his facade of being simply nosy. “Actually, lemme take a look’at that.”

Without so much as waiting for permission, he nicks it from Alastor’s hold, kerchief and all. Alastor does not object or protest—at the very least, the spider hadn’t gone so far as to brush his hand. If anything, it has removed the need for the deer to figure out what to do with it. _Who_ gets it out of his sight or sees to its disposal matters not, as long as it is not himself—however aggravating it is to again admit he is ever unable to identify why _not_ himself.

As Angel gives a cursory glance to the flower, now respectfully right-side up, one of his lower hands unwinds the cloth from its stem, and summarily drops it in the Radio Demon’s general direction. Much to both of their surprise, the shorter instinctively moves to catch it. 

Some part of Angel feels relieved. Alastor does not acknowledge it otherwise, and merely holds it. He regards the taller demon with a look of bemused irritation, and like most things, Angel ignores it.

“What is this fuckin’… _Beauty and the Beast_ bullshit…” the spider scoffs with hilarity, more to himself, as he examines the weary-looking rose. The idea, the comparison, is both amusing and sad as it strikes him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Angel turns his torso away, bringing the flower with him, as if guarding it. “Guy like you wouldn’t undastand. You really want this back, or were you just gonna burn it?”

Despite his intention to, in fact, rid of it in some way, Alastor has no immediate answer. _Burning_ it seems a bit excessive, even to him. How dare Vox instill even a _sliver_ of sentimentality in him. “I’m tired of looking at it, yes.”

“Ok, and that’s a reason to destroy it?” Angel challenges critically. “You’re bored of it, you don’t wanna play with it no more, so you just throw it away?”

Just where is the spider going with this? Why does he sound so personally offended? 

“… Yes? I see no reason why I should be required to keep it,” Alastor inclines his head questioningly. “If it cannot be repurposed, is that not what one does when something no longer has use?”

 _“Ugh.”_ Angel exhales as if with disgust. “Men.”

With no further explanation, he turns on his heel, half-wilted rose in tow, and strides away, leaving a veritably bewildered Alastor in his wake. 

The deer glances down to the ruffled kerchief still in his hold, as if it might provide some form of answer. He has no plans to return it to Vox, not really. Yet unlike a rose, cloth is not liable to deteriorate quite so fast, and may have other uses. 

He tests the fabric between his thumb and index claws. Soft, smooth, not quite silk, not quite cotton. Merely pleasant.

A drink coaster for the sake of subtly demeaning Vox in private, then, he decides. Even better, a symbolic piece in his arsenal for emotional blackmail. If Vox wishes to play irritating _games,_ Alastor is plenty content to assume his role.

\-----

Angel refrains from slamming his bedroom door behind him.

He isn’t angry, not really—merely frustrated with himself, and frustrated with the situation as a whole. He had expected himself to remain neutral, at least, or at best, unswayed. Just as his own fight has been his own for years, Vox’s fight is his alone.

Shouldn’t it be?

For as many exchanges he and the Overlord have already had, is he not already somewhat involved? For as much as Alastor seems trenched in _something_ about him, and has by consequence dragged Angel half-in with him, was it really ever a surprise he should find himself troubled?

With his back leaned against his door, Angel gazes down at the rose as he turns its stem gently between his fingers. He isn’t sure, when he really thinks about it, just why he’s upset. Perhaps it’s just how personally relatable it all is for him. Perhaps it’s the implication of how Vox’s physical representation of a peace offering, or god forbid, his _heart,_ has been presumably left to wither. 

Has Valentino not left him to wither long enough? How could Alastor be so cruel?

How often has he seen Valentino discard things— _people_ —when they no longer serve him in some way, when they are no longer fun to play with? How could Alastor not see the connection? How could Alastor not _care_ when Angel himself has already gone through nearly the same?

It’s unfair, he knows, to expect a borderline sociopathic cannibal to even think of such a thing. He knows, and the stubborn ache in the pit of his chest lessens. It does not, however, erase the sudden urgency and unease.

If Alastor is unwilling to take care of Vox’s heart, then he will just have to take matters into his own hands.

For the first time in what feels like years, Vox’s phone chimes in a way that does not suggest an imminent business meeting, pointless numbers climbing, or Valentino’s incessant demands—work-related or otherwise. 

He jolts and sits up in his office chair, forcing himself just a moment away from his spontaneous nap— _editing._ Yes, editing. He’s been hard at work. The whole time. Absolutely. Even in his dreams, Valentino’s not about to find him slacking.

Right, the phone.

In his disjointed return to the waking world, the TV Overlord is equal parts intrigued and apprehensive when he sees the bubbly light-pink icon of Angel Dust, never mind its appended message.

> how's it goin, sugar? |

He blinks once, dazed, blinks twice, alert.

The two had traded numbers far back, mainly for the sake of emergencies, but rarely ever traded messages. He wonders, then, what _emergency_ it might be this time. Valentino left him on a curbside in the rain in some dodgy corner of the city again, maybe? Some prop in need of immediate replacement, and no money to replace it with? An impromptu film shooting, even at this hour—some special client, maybe? 

Perhaps he’s taking back what he said in the studio, and is now returning to lecture him. If Valentino’s complaints are anything to go by, that, too, qualifies as an emergency. Perhaps Angel wants to continue the conversation, offer him a few nice words, a bit of consolation.

He has already made that mistake once today.

Best not to expect anything kind. 

> | Depends on why you're asking.
> 
> a bitch can't just ask? |
> 
> | Without having a reason? Doubt it
> 
> teach me to care about you, damn | 
> 
> | Is that really all you wanted?
> 
> could you POSSIBLY be anymore of an ass about this? |
> 
> i just wanted to check in, if it matters so goddamn much. |

The two messages come in semi-rapid succession, and Vox stares at the tiny screen, unsure of what to make of it all. _Check in?_

He has tried Angel’s patience, and yet Angel remains patient with him all the same—for the most part. Though he would prefer to let himself be warmed by this attempt at conversation at all, his instinct is to be cautious. Kindness rarely comes without a price, as he has so often learned, guilty of it himself as he is.

He thinks back to their conversation earlier in the day, tries to play it back in his mind. Though nothing particularly off-putting comes to mind, other than his own pathetic weariness, at least, he remains both comforted and disconcerted. Had he toed the line of casualness too far, put too much faith in the spider?

> | Valentino didn’t put you up to this, did he?
> 
> no, Valentino didn’t fuckin put me up to this. |
> 
> chrissakes, Vox. |

On Angel’s end, though frustrated, he reminds himself of his—of both their—circumstances. If their roles were reversed, he would undoubtedly be just as wary, just as tetchy; a testament to how deeply Valentino has sunken his claws into his fellow Overlord’s psyche. 

He recalls the discussion a week prior in his dressing room—how firmness had, very clearly, not been the answer. 

Vox beats him to it.

> | Sorry.

The simple word punches him in the gut and affirms the spider’s too-late suspicions. His shoulders fall, and his exhale comes as something like a defeated scoff. He feels something somewhere between regretful for defaulting to snarky passive aggression—hardly any better than Valentino’s guilt tripping, he should know better—and frustrated for the TV Overlord’s tendency toward submission.

Nothing like how he used to be. 

It’s like looking in a mirror.

Before Angel can formulate a response, he glances down to find the _‘typing…’_ ellipses bobbing, and settles on waiting. 

> | Just had to make sure.  
>  But I find out you’re lying, and you’re done for.

So they both have their faults. That’s to be expected; in Hell, it’d be far more unusual if one _didn’t_ have an unfortunate or toxic habit. It’s fine, even—at least Vox still has a bit of fight left in him. Annoying resistance is far better than nearly passing out in his dressing room, and the heavy resignation in his voice earlier in the studio.

> yeah yeah, no need for the Mr. toughguy act, i get it |
> 
> believe me, I get it. |
> 
> | You really went out of your way just to check up on me?  
>  Why?
> 
> why not? |
> 
> I been thinkin about our talks lately. |
> 
> and y’know, power outages ain’t that easy to ignore, sweetheart |
> 
> | I’d rather talk about literally anything else.
> 
> ok |
> 
> so how bout that rose you gave Smiles over here? |

Vox just about drops his phone. That’s just playing _dirty._

> | How do you know about that?
> 
> honey, I know all sorts of things. |

Angel, reclined now on his bed with one arm behind his head, twiddles the half-wilted rose in one of his lower hands. He wonders whether to add another message or not, what he might say. It’s been proven to him by now that Vox is, despite his weariness, still one of caution. When no response comes for a long minute, he decides it’s worth pushing his luck, worth getting straight to the point. 

> this mean u guys made a truce? |
> 
> | Yeah. Something like that.

This time, it is the spider’s turn to brief silence. He sits up, glances to the rose in his hold again, considers the symbolism he’s personally assigned to it. Though he’s kept comparatively good care of it, it still looks pathetic, tired, destined to fade and die within a few days. It’s just a rose, he knows, and yet he can’t help but feel sad. The Overlord has suffered Angel’s own spite for so long, and gone far longer without support.

He shouldn't feel this way, and yet he does. Painfully, he does.

With both of his upper hands, he cradles the blossom, leans himself over it somewhat, begs its forgiveness with regret as deep as his sorrow. 

Is he prepared to take Vox’s side, for better or for worse? If no one stands with him, if no one takes care of his heart like Cherri Bomb had taken care of Angel’s, what will become of him? Will he be destined to wither away, too, or lose what little fight he has left in him, just as Angel nearly had?

Vox, having the attention of someone other than the unpredictable Valentino, someone focused on him by choice for a change, someone _tangible,_ pursues the exchange. As uncertain as he is whether or not his conversation partner is simply busy or has lost interest, he is unwilling to let it taper without a small nudge. 

> | Angel?

That settles it, then.

> interested in callin a truce between us too? |
> 
> i mean we are in the same boat after all, like you said |

The Overlord considers. He doesn’t know why he needs time to decide—as much as he ignores the painful grip in his chest, he wishes desperately to accept. The prospect of even some vague semblance of support, more reliable than his recent tendency toward assumptions and desperate grasping for consolation, is undeniably enticing. 

He’d be a fool to reject it. Yet some small part of him, perhaps, will ever default to caution. Especially when it comes down to matters of alliances, especially when his most notable had so spectacularly backfired.

> | Conditions?
> 
> no conditions. just a coupla guys decidin they don’t wanna go at each other’s throats no more |
> 
> from one person who GETS IT to the next, ya kno? |

Vox knows. He frowns tiredly, pensively, at the screen of his phone. He wishes to see what Angel’s expression might be, to know what his tone might’ve been. Compared to the beginning of their exchange, his words have less impatient fire, and instead lean toward hope. 

He doesn’t want to be so untrusting, and yet he must.

> | I’ll think about it before we make it official.  
>  Give me a demonstration first. Prove you’re not gonna backstab me
> 
> kay, if that’s how you wanna play |
> 
> start takin me to work, hows that sound? |
> 
> we’ll have time to talk, just you & me. |
> 
> I get a little of somethin, you get me in tight quarters provin i ain’t interested in stabbin you in anything but the ass |
> 
> if that’s what you really want, anyway |
> 
> | Not really.  
>  We’ll take my limo. Give it a couple days, maybe more if I’m feeling generous.  
>  Deal?
> 
> deal <3 |

Angel counts this as a win—even somewhat more than he bargained for. He had harboured no intentions to attempt anything less than civility, even if Vox had denied his alliance outright. A quiet, unspoken truce, somewhat like what they already have, is one thing, but potentially making it _official_ would be a far better outcome. 

The Overlord, when Angel thinks back, has never given him reason to suspect he might suddenly turn hostile—never has Vox quite been one to get involved in his personal affairs. Merely a work-related presence, if that, much like today; kept normally behind the curtain that is Valentino. 

With the curtain drawn back now, with Angel’s perception no longer clouded by assumptions and associative disdain, he sees things now all too clearly as they are.

A demon already so previously uninvolved is not one Angel expects to change his tune, especially not after his… performance, in his dressing room. A demon sharing the same space beneath a mutual tyrant, too, deserves of a little extra confidence. A demon, so beaten down he hardly resembles the same go-getting spitfire of days past, deserves reconsideration, a second chance. 

A demon is still a demon, but Vox is one alone. He could’ve lashed out like a cornered animal—and had, somewhat—but instead chose to run. 

Had Cherri Bomb not offered her phone, her hand, her shoulder, Angel, too, would have been left alone, assumed to have had it all together, seen only as his own impervious spitfire up until his flame was forcibly snuffed out.

The two have so much in common it pains him. 

Rather than dwelling on the pain, on the discomfort of how comparable their situations are, Angel comes to terms with it, accepts it, and embraces it.

For his own part, Vox does not expect much. Though he is inclined to wariness, and entitled to his suspicion, he has seen the many ways Valentino has restricted Angel’s freedom, much like his own, albeit with slightly different methods and motives. His caution is, for once, more of a reflex than personal. 

He wants, almost, to figuratively reach his hand out, and allow Angel to decide whether it’s meant to be a request for Vox’s own comfort, or a way for Angel to help himself back up to a stand. Perhaps the two might stand together, each other a mutual crutch in the face of one neither of them can _deal_ with.

He knows better than to hope. 

And yet he hopes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the formatting in the second half of this one; I couldn't quite get it to mimic how I had it in my writing app, but didn't want to overcomplicate it. Vox's texts are meant to be all-in-one with line breaks, whereas Angel's a multi-texter.


	12. Bittersweet Neutrality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peace is an unheard of thing in Hell. Angel gets what he thought he wanted.

It’s a peculiar arrangement, at first, almost.

The two have long been unaccustomed to each other’s presence, at least not on such personal terms, and not accidental slip-ups of terrified honesty or desperate weariness. 

Vox’s limousine is, oddly, much more modest than Valentino’s—when it comes to spoiling the moth’s every whim and interest, Vox rarely holds back. For himself, he takes only slightly above what is necessary, if flashy. The vehicle’s sleek, steely black exterior with its neon trim contrasts dashingly with the deep navy blue interior and glowing strips of cyan light. 

Compared to Valentino’s somewhat chaotically sybaritic, hazy, violently hot-coloured interior, it is quiet in here, composed, and undoubtedly soothing. Angel would almost be out of place, standing out like a rather sore, pink thumb, if not for its inherently dim cabin. Instead his fur is dyed a rich lavender in the cool lighting, and he sits, reclined in his oversized chiffon scarf, beside its owner. 

Though Vox sits with crossed legs and an arm rested across the back of the seat behind his company, the spider is more at ease than he would’ve expected himself to be. Over the past few days of their deal, the TV Overlord has chanced occasional glances between snippets of conversation, but they are fleeting, never quite direct—obviously appreciative of the taller demon’s choice in attire and figure, but respectful, much like how he is often mindful of his space.

Just as much as Angel proves his intentions to be civil by sharing in his company more often, Vox, unknowingly, proves to the spider he is not a threat. 

If anything, Angel notes, the Overlord is surprisingly calm, if a bit awkward, in settings that are not overtly lascivious, demanding direction, or calculated plots. Simply _being_ is not a thing Vox is well practiced in.

After days prior of battling his own thoughts, emotions, and eventual acceptance, the spider hardly needs convincing an alliance with Vox was ever anything less than possible—at least not in recent times. It’s unfortunate, he thinks, that it took years of the Overlord eroding in some way, a multitude of power outages, and a nervous break for it to finally be approachable, but he knows it was an equally unfortunate necessity. 

A victim so deeply mired in so carefully crafted an illusion often needs time to see it for what it is, understand it, and come to terms with the fact their friend—partner—loved one—is a monster, before they are able to accept the warnings and an outstretched hand—even from a fellow victim. 

Angel knows, understands it well, and no longer holds it against him. 

It takes time, but eventually he lets go of his prior resentment, understands the Overlord was never in a position to help, much like how the spider was always slightly beyond any position to ask for it. 

A natural puppetmaster such as Valentino knows, too, how to keep every party separated, wary of their supposed opposers, each perfectly catered to the role he needs each individual to fit. When the behaviour is so deeply engraved in his person, he need not plan it. The words often tumble out on their own, assigning faults and reassigning intentions in whatever way suits his own twisted perception of the world around him.

Abuse engulfs a person in their entirety. Shedding the lies and dismantling the illusion takes time. And when finally the time is right, the damaged remnants of the victims left behind may finally begin to band together, take comfort in each other, and understand.

Angel understands.

It takes barely a day for their occasional lapses into silence to reach the point of no longer being noteworthy, or be anything but comfortable. 

Vox relishes in having someone other than a faceless work associate with him, or an insatiable moth constantly invading his space. It gives him reprieve from Valentino’s burning attention turned chilling winter, when he craves nothing more than a bit of emotional downtime. Even if he has time to decompress, spending that time alone rarely has a positive effect. By comparison, spending that time with company, somewhat counterintuitively, at least for a demon in Hell, allows him rest.

Angel takes comfort in the surprisingly neutral company, and the shelter that the Overlord’s limousine allows. Its distinct style is so unlike that of the studio, of _Valentino,_ it gives him a place to simply exist, for a change, away from that side of his life. The cool lighting and dark upholstery provides him an experience that is not unlike being submerged, blanketed in an oddly calming stillness; the outside world cut off, muffled, nonexistent. If it were anyone else sharing this detached space with him, the isolation would give him far different an impression and panic him. 

It is, somehow, the closest to _safe_ he has ever felt in Hell.

There is nothing between them, not really. Nothing more than an Overlord testing the grounds of a potential truce, and a spider cradling the damaged heart of a fellow victim in place of a rose that has long wilted.

He wishes, almost, for this to never change.

As the vehicle rounds a corner and eases along the street home to Valentino’s studio, Angel sighs, resigned to himself, and glances toward Vox. Without a returned gaze to meet, it instead drifts toward the darkened window past the Overlord's tilted display, and he notes with distant curiosity. 

“Snow. This early in the year?”

The image on Vox’s screen sharpens as he returns to the present, and he lifts the corner of his head from his palm to turn and look. Angel notes two things in this moment: his display had been dimmed, and by extension, he is comfortable enough to doze in the spider’s presence. 

He is gripped by a sudden regret he had missed the chance to see what it might be like to _simply exist_ when leaned against a safe sleeping someone’s arm.

Angel had gotten what he wanted, and yet he is found wanting for more. _Want_ is a silly thing when it's unreasonable, and he knows. Vox does not have eyes for him, and he knows. He knows, and he knew, always knew, going into it. Perhaps that, too, is why he had wanted to remain so neutral.

Vox has shown him respect, and Angel will return it. It's enough to be comfortable. It's enough to be safe. It's enough to know Vox is the same.

“Happens,” the Overlord says quietly as he sits up. A ripple of static interference muddies his image for a split second with a matching fizzle, in place of clearing his throat to shake the sleep from himself. “Though it took longer than I thought it would. They were callin’ for it last week.”

“Bet Smiles ain’t gonna be too happy about that,” Angel huffs a humourless laugh, and begins pulling on his decorative gloves. 

“Not a fan of snow?” Vox ponders, providing him with the next.

“Don’t know, but the Princess’s got him runnin’ errands today.”

The TV Overlord falls silent. He hasn’t the time to voice his concerns before the limo slows to a stop alongside the imposing building. Though the spider is in no rush, he doesn’t wait, either, and sees himself onto the curbside. A chilling gust greets him, and he shields his face with one of his upper arms as a lower hand makes to close the door behind him.

“Angel, wait.” The Overlord calls. When the spider turns his head to glance back, he finds Vox leaned partially across the seat to better peer out and see him. “About our truce.”

Angel moves to face him, tugging his scarf more snugly against his shoulders to better protect from the cold, and hums questioningly. He ignores the hopeful pang in his chest as much as he embraces Vox’s soft tone. 

“Think it’s safe to that I accept,” Vox explains calmly. “Been a nice couple of days. I’d almost thank you for it.” 

Angel allows himself to smile, and wastes no time bending down again to take the Overlord’s offered hand to shake. He lingers, just for a moment—just for the warmth, he tells himself.

“‘Bout time you came around, sweetheart.” He winks, releases the warm hand, and straightens back up to tighten his hardly-any-help shawl. “Now, not that I wanna cut our little heartfelt moment short, but I gotta head in. It’s cold as balls out here, and I don’t want Val thinkin’ I’m late. Already pushed his nerves enough by showin’ up late the other night.”

“Go, before you freeze to second-death,” Vox chuckles quietly. “I’d see you in, but I got my own studio to get back to.”

“Thanks for the lift, _Mista Ovalord._ Glad this worked out.” Rather than head in immediately, Angel remains a moment on the sidewalk, just long enough to see the media monarch pull the door closed, and waves him off as the car begins to roll forward. 

With a darkened window in the way, there is no way for the spider to see his returned wave, though Vox returns it all the same. Despite the bitter cold outside, his heart is sufficiently warm. To have Alastor at least somewhat on his side is enough to make him soar, but there is something to be said about Angel—one who knows his pain all too well—having his back, too.

The way back to his domain is spent in silence, and the Overlord allows his thoughts to drift. He worries, somewhat, about Valentino catching wind of any of this. He worries for himself, for Angel, but has already prepared a lie should it be needed—however absurd it is that he need a lie at all. Hell is Hell, and _friends_ are difficult to make down here, certainly, but only has it ever been something comparable to a crime since his union with Valentino. 

Even as he exits his limo, Vox’s mind is busy. He foregoes turning immediately to his obligations once he reaches his workshop, and instead turns to his monitors. 

Though his amicable terms with Angel leave him in a pleasant mood, the matter of a certain deer being apparently caught out in this early snowstorm nags at him.


	13. First Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The only consistent thing about Alastor is his inconsistency.

Snow in Hell isn’t a rare occurrence so much as it is a peculiar sight. 

The chill is often preferred, usually, over the much messier affair that is _blood-rain,_ but for the most part, Hell’s weather diversity, and altogether climate, is comparable to that of the surface world’s. 

It is only the everlasting dim-red atmosphere that gives it a new type of novelty, for how it makes most precipitation come down in shades of crimson, and collect on the ground and in the streets with a tinge of pink. An oddly delicate, beautiful thing, especially when it’s snow, in stark contrast with the dreary and dark looming structures. 

With snow comes its pervasive sense of quiet; for all the hustle and bustle and far-off franticness of scuffles and disagreements in the city, as the first few flakes fall, nearly all of Hell slows to a crawl. Though most demons are unswayed, the affected rings seem muted, if just slightly. A select few demons retreat inside, content to bask in the tranquility, temporary as it is, as the first pink blanket coats the streets.

Alastor is not so lucky to be one such demon cozily nestled inside, able to watch with simple appreciation.

He has been out and about for a majority of the morning, leaning into afternoon now. Since his first moment out the door compared to now, the snow has accumulated enough to muffle the click of his heels entirely, and he is never quite able to keep it free from his hair and shoulders. He wears gloves no more protective than his usual, nothing more than his normal suit—not even a scarf.

The poor conditions sour his mood far beyond what it already had been. With just his heavy aura of static and brooding tones, he cuts a path through the remaining sea of lesser demons unwilling to linger even remotely close to a prowling Radio Demon. He isn’t out hunting, not really, but he would certainly not pass up the chance to eviscerate some bumbling fool dumb enough to try his patience.

More than anything, the snow reminds him of his last meeting with Vox. 

Stupid, traitorous Vox, who had promised him respect just to all but vanish in the end. Irksome, charming Vox, who had used such a sweet tone to say his name. Endearing, superfluous Vox, who had shown such a gentle face when wishing him well.

Perhaps there’d been a misunderstanding. Perhaps this silence is what the Overlord had thought Alastor wanted. Really, it’s even what the Radio Demon himself thought he _did_ want.

He regrets ever playing into the charade. The distance sets fire to his resentment, and he trades his doubt for spite. Should Vox show his face again, he may well just smash it in. The Overlord is not his responsibility—nothing but his long-standing adversary, he reminds himself.

In his seething irritability, Alastor does not care where specifically his path leads, only that it is the fastest way home—back to the Hotel.

“You didn’t listen,” a twice-mechanical voice says behind him, almost sad.

The Radio Demon freezes. He turns his head, just barely, to look back with an unimpressed, questioning glare. In his hurried annoyance, for the weather, for the circumstances, for his own turmoil, he has passed unwittingly in front of one of many television-riddled storefronts. 

The image of Vox flickers on just one slightly-below-eye-level display, rather than all of them, rather than one higher up to allow him to loom as is normally expected. His position in the image is comically crooked, as though trying to lean through the glass of the appliance to better see the deer. 

Alastor does not give him the satisfaction of moving back closer, much less any verbal response. He only stares expectantly, wondering why he’s bothered to stop at all. He dares not try to reason with himself, dares not try to place just why seeing the Overlord’s face dims his fire more than stokes it.

Through the broadcast, it’s difficult to tell whether or not Vox’s own screen is pristine. 

He has only his expressions and tone to go by, and however hard Alastor tries, he is unable to discern them with any reliable accuracy. 

“Said it was slated to snow, didn’t I?” The image of Vox teases as much as he genuinely fusses with worry. “No hat, no gloves? Don’t you own a real coat?”

“Worried about your rival?” Alastor ridicules condescendingly, conveniently overlooking how he projects. “You’ll get yourself killed, darling.”

“Not if it’s you,” the TV fizzles earnestly. 

There’s an edge of something new in his voice that Alastor is unable to identify. Really, he’s tired of _not knowing._ Whether it’s what his would-be adversary’s intentions are, what his own feelings are, what he himself wants, he is tired of it always being slightly outside his ability to grasp. For as much as he would normally retort with a threat, his rival’s tone gives him long enough pause that he only regards the flickering image contemplatively for the moment.

Vox allows him that moment, content to simply look up at him. 

“What is it that you want, Vox?” The Radio Demon finally demands impatiently. “Our _‘truce’_ is as good as dead—and I’m afraid further attempts to placate me are highly unlikely to succeed going forward. Your tricks are getting tiresome.”

“No tricks,” the Overlord assures, despite the falter in his expression. 

So it’s over, then. 

Just like that.

He knew to expect it, but not so soon. Attempts at truces have ever been part of their back-and-forth, never quite concrete, never quite long-lasting. His now-reliably good terms with Angel Dust had nearly lulled him into a state of confidence, nearly made him forget.

The finality about the breaking of this one makes his smile a little uneven. He wonders just what had pressed Alastor to reach this point. 

Despite the pang in his chest, he keeps his tone as light as he’s able. “Promise. Just checkin’ in on you.”

It was nice while it lasted.

“That’s hardly necessary.” Though the deer answers first before his static-fuzzed mind can form much of a coherent thought, maybe it’s better this way. Maybe it’s better not to react based on the way he suddenly feels much more sluggish, and not necessarily from weariness. “In fact, I’m rather insulted you would think it’s appropriate—“

“They treatin’ you right at the Hotel?”

“… I beg your pardon?”

Vox regards him with a strangely genuine, nearly sad knit of his pixellated brows. Just a bit more. Let him enjoy this just a few more more minutes, a little reassurance, a little company. “Most infamous demon in Hell who’s not already an Overlord,” he ventures, “and no winter coat.”

“I fail to see why you feel the need to pity me,” Alastor snaps, without any bite. 

“Weren’t you able to buy one? Or didn’t they provide you one?” The Overlord worries, truly, about the implications. They’re from completely different worlds, in different corners of Hell, and yet he frets their circumstances may be similar. Is he taking care of himself? Do his business partners care for him? Are they taking too much? “Aren’t you cold?” 

The Radio Demon does not make the effort to respond. Some part of him considers summoning his microphone stand and jamming its end into the noisy television set to put a forceful end to his tangle of emotions. The merciless part considers magicking Vox’s forfeit kerchief into his hand and burning it to indicate the termination of their truce with much more vicious, emotionally devastating finality.

Much like his repeated so-called wishes to destroy his rose, Alastor finds he cannot bring himself to. In the end, he does nothing but regard the wavering image with as much dismissiveness as expectancy. 

“It’s freezing out there,” Vox suddenly realises, “and you’re here talking to me.”

“I’d hardly count this as a conversation.” The deer states. “But you, my troubling foe, started it. As you always do. As we never will again.”

“You could’ve just left,” the Overlord points out. 

Alastor, ever one for droll humour, turns his head back forward and resumes his stroll, all too glad to accept an out. “Too right you are!”

Vox, ever one to wear his heart on his sleeve, lurches urgently in his frame, all too desperate to be heard. “Wait—!”

The Radio Demon waits. He does not turn to look again, but he waits. Just one more chance, he tells himself. It’s Vox’s last chance, before he carries on home, never looks back again, forgets the whole thing, their game, this softness. 

“Can we meet one last time?”

Despite himself, despite his attempt to convince himself not to barely seconds prior, Alastor glances backward. For all his growing weariness in being unable to predict even himself, he forces himself, at least, to remain silent. 

“On the outskirts of town,” Vox rushes, all too aware of the deer’s failing patience, to get the words out before his time is up. “There’s a bigger park. We can go there, an’ you can decide for yourself whether you want to flay me, or to uphold our truce.”

“You’re handing that ridiculous head of yours to me on a silver platter,” Alastor mutters through his teeth, more sombrely thoughtful than with threat. “Do you understand that?”

“It’s a gamble I’m willing to take,” the Overlord all but whispers back. “Tomorrow, same time. One condition.”

 _“Condition?”_ Alastor hisses. “You’re trying your luck, television.”

“I know. I know. Hear me out?” The Radio Demon acquiesces with his silence, and Vox continues. “Let me walk you there. At least halfway. Then the minute we get there, it’s all in your hands. Let me just…” 

He trails off, and Alastor hears so great a sense of resignation and defeat in the Overlord’s lowered tone that he is almost tempted to turn completely around, just to put a face to that pathetic sound. He decides, for his own sake, it may be better if he doesn’t know.

“… Let me just make the most of it until we get there. Alright? Then you can call it all off, and we can fight like we always do,” there’s an odd, persistent buzz overlaid in his voice, and Alastor forces himself to instead look only further away. “And it’ll be fine. I can regenerate, and we’ll go back ta how we always were. But just fake it for ten minutes until we get there. Okay? Can ya do that for me?”

“Same time tomorrow,” is all that Alastor says to confirm, and, rather slowly, resumes his walk home.

Behind him, the previously-occupied display glitches and gives way to static. A moment later, it, along with the rest of the screens in the storefront, goes black.


	14. Lasting Impression

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vox gets his ten minutes of neutrality. Alastor gets his fight, sort of.

There isn’t a corner of Hell that isn’t occupied in some way by fellow demons.

Unless one has the Radio Demon in tow, in which case empty space is always promptly made.

“Must be lonely,” Vox comments. He looks exaggeratedly on either side of them to note the completely barren sidewalks. Then with a hint of, not pity, but understanding sympathy, he looks back to peer down at the deer beside him. “This happen everywhere you go?”

Alastor only hums a noncommittal hum. He pointedly avoids the Overlord’s gaze, and keeps his own held forward. _Something_ twists and wrings itself in knots in the pit of his stomach, being in such close proximity again with his to-be adversary as they walk side-by-side. 

Apprehension, maybe. Has yet to look directly at Vox even once today. He doesn’t want to know what his expressions are, whether or not his screen is intact. 

Unease, maybe. He’s planned countless murders, shepherded numerous victims to their demise, but never quite in this way. Never has he had quite so… willing a participant. Appointments for clashes are one thing, but it’s another matter entirely when he isn’t fully certain whether or not his opponent intends to fight back.

He isn’t sure what about himself has changed in the time between barely a month ago and now; between a noticed fracture and yet another failed truce; between first a crude comment and last a sweet tone. It’s all mundane, it’s all been a blur, it’s all vexing, it’s all been shockingly new.

No, he thinks. When the two have known each other for countless years, it would be unfair to say this started only weeks ago. 

What’s changed is his own involvement with the Hotel, he comes to understand. If only the TV-headed fool hadn’t chosen the wrong side. If only he were under the Hotel’s roof, Alastor would have an excuse to accept these disquieted feelings and yield to the instinct to protect—be it one of the fairer means, or someone considered his charge. 

“Still got a ways to go,” Vox attempts to win his attention again with conversation. “Are you cold?”

In some rather pointless, self-defeating way, Alastor had not bothered to show up with a proper coat. He could simply magic one, if he wished, but the indignant, prideful side of him wishes more to prove that he is invulnerable, that Vox was never right, that he never needed one. 

It does not take a trained eye to see the way he shivers, enough that the tips of his hair quiver and monocle chain clinks minutely, whenever the pair’s path brings them to pause at an intersection. Though he obstinately refuses to answer, there comes a point where he is unable to hide a harsh huff of breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding to conserve heat. 

Rather than allow this to continue, the TV Overlord paces slightly ahead, turns, and places himself in Alastor’s path. It is not the first time, and it will not be the last if it comes down to it. The deer is not the only stubborn one present. “Hold on, let—“

“Don’t,” Alastor warns carefully, nearly drowned out by the rising hum of his own static. He dares not lift his gaze, dares not look in Vox’s direction. Whether he’s speaking to the possibility of the taller demon’s softness or pity, he isn’t confident he’ll be able to handle it. 

“Please,” the taller demon says, quietly, almost in a whisper, unwilling to act without express permission. “Just until we get there.”

Right. Their agreement. Alastor tells himself it’s the only reason he reluctantly consents to whatever it is Vox intends to do—that it’s only fair to give him his ten minutes of neutrality as previously promised, before their inevitable brawl and never-again. 

As the Radio Demon’s tense shoulders lower with his acquiescing sigh and exhaled word of compliance, he finds them soon draped in a heavy blue coat not belonging to him. He glances up sharply, reflexively, in time to meet Vox’s gaze as his hands draw back, to see the lopsided, almost apologetic smile on his screen, and is instantly disarmed. 

Habitually, Alastor searches his rival’s face—he finds no smudges, no damage, no technicolour bruises. Instead he finds only a characteristically uncharacteristic softness, and perhaps a suggestion of weariness etched beneath his uneven eyes. For far longer than either intend, they simply regard each other, far more deeply than they have before. 

Perhaps that's the benefit of truces. 

Simply being. 

“If I weren’t one to keep my word,” the deer mutters in a hushed tone, finally prying his gaze away, “you’d be a twice-dead man.”

“It was a gamble I was willing to take,” Vox reminds tenderly, and pockets his hands. Without his topcoat, he wears only his usual suit underneath. Not quite protective, but certainly not leaving him exposed to the elements either—nearly as if planned. 

One more gamble, the Overlord risks, and turns his torso to offer his elbow. 

“You’ll be lucky if you’re able to move again by tomorrow,” Alastor tells him with diluted threat, as he threads his arm into the taller demon’s. 

It’s fine; as long as he gets to shred the Overlord the moment they step through the park gates, it’s fine. If it’s the equivalent to Vox’s death-row wishes, he’ll allow just about anything, provided clothes—already within reason—stay on, and it means nothing. Nothing at all.

“I’ve had worse,” Vox admits, and laughs dryly. He talks, just to talk, just to distract himself from the certain fact his face is adoringly pixellated. “Not just from scuffles, there’s worse things.”

“I don’t want to hear anything about it.” _Please, don’t give me any more reason to doubt myself._

Vox relinquishes his attempts at conversation for the remainder of their short walk together. Silence, he thinks, even if not fully comfortable, is far better than risking their last few neutral moments being spent with hopes traded for barely-contained contemptuous remarks. He chooses instead to focus on the feeling of Alastor’s arm intertwined with his, makes it a point to cement it in his memory. 

Even if he is to spend days ripped apart and painfully regenerating, the memory is one to last an eternity.

At least he’ll be able to take that break Valentino had so kindly suggested, and think of nothing else.

Far sooner than either would like, the pair reach the towering gates leading to the designated, open park. If it weren’t a sure-to-be deathbed, the mostly-untouched pink snow glistening beyond would almost be beautiful. Perhaps it still is. It’s a scenic, fitting place to see their final truce to its end.

When he is faced with the reality, Vox’s resolve evaporates in milliseconds, and the image on his screen glitches over his petrified, regretful, hopeless expression. Without meaning to, he abruptly brings them both to a stop, unable to step through the gate. He doesn’t care about being torn apart, not really—Valentino’s burns are far worse. It’s the realisation that this is the last time, that after this, truce attempts will be disregarded in full, that he will never share a moment like this with the deer again, that freezes him. 

Alastor does not look up. He does not rush to pull them through, either. He merely waits. Outwardly, he looks composed; a calculated feline with a mouse trapped beneath its claw, deigning to let it come to terms with its own mortality. Inwardly, he would rather turn on his heel and leave, forget his own threats, forget the whole thing, forget he was ever there at all.

The Overlord audibly draws in a steadying breath. Then brings them, together, one step beneath the gate, one step past it, and releases Alastor’s arm. Then, alone, he paces farther in; one step, three, five.

The Radio Demon remains where he was left, watching Vox assume a more appropriate location to begin their battle. A ragged cascade of heavy tones and scrambled static darkens the space around him as he prepares, and considers just how to end him.

Should he bother to move at all, and simply let his portals and tendrils do the work for him while Vox’s back is still turned? Would that be unfair, too impersonal, after all this? Should he risk getting close, risk being deceived more directly, if he were to approach with intent to mangle and de-circuit, to find where the faint steam vents from under his suit, where his static current originates, what makes his chest hum? Would that be enough to get back at him for this month of emotional turmoil, this uncertainty and distress?

Would it make him feel better? Would it change anything that’s occurred, remove every feeling he’s avoided, undo everything he’s come to understand about himself?

The deer paces forward to step into their metaphorical ring, and Vox turns to face him with an expression that is gravely firm, resolved only to his expected defeat. 

Alastor takes a step forward.

Though there may be no marks on the Overlord’s screen now, he is unable to put the memory of one out of his mind. 

He hesitates.

For perhaps the first time since his fall to Hell, he is unable to bring himself to hit first. 

And finally he understands.

He sees no fight left in Vox. Only the afterimage of a technicolour burn, the scars left behind from someone who was meant to love him, a weary Sinner on the wrong side of fate. 

Alastor does not understand love. He does not believe in fate. But he knows a broken man when he sees one, and knows respectful mercy. 

He cannot strike someone already littered with undeserved bruises. No self-respecting demon should.

His static recedes, and he turns his back to the opponent he knows will not strike it. With his mind made up, or perhaps resigned in his own way, he makes to take his leave. 

The coat can be abandoned on the side of the street the moment he can bring himself to discard it. Just as surely as Vox had planned to shed it for him as a gentlemanly gesture, it was surely meant to be eventual collateral damage. Or maybe he’ll keep it, as he’s kept his kerchief, and continue to pretend they’re pieces only for emotional blackmail should Vox irritate him again.

It’s fine to leave things as they are. The Overlord may not be his responsibility, and it may not be his place to shield him, but there is no need to further harm him. Both can keep their dignity, even if Vox is left to fend for himself, and Alastor can put this behind him. 

Who is he even trying to fool anymore.

For a moment, Vox is nothing short of stunned, his own static pixellating the middle horizontal band of his face, as he watches the deer go. He trembles, unaware if it’s from the natural cold or adrenaline. He draws in a breath, once, twice, steadies his composure in exchange for buckling knees. 

He laughs, a single heavy note of as much relief as disbelief, or maybe it’s a sob. He isn’t sure what to feel—it’s everything and nothing all at once. Some part of himself can’t accept this—he doesn’t know what any of it means, what it should mean, whether the Radio Demon has simply cut him loose (what for?), or if it’s something more (is that even possible?). 

Eventually his daze gives way to frustration, and he clambers unsteadily back to his feet. 

Alastor makes it as far as several steps from the gate before something cold and fluffy hits the back of his head. 

“You’re kzz—kih— _kidding me!”_ The Overlord manages to yelp through his stammered glitches. When Alastor whirls back around to look with no less than murder in his eyes, he finds Vox already hastily packing another snowball. “I ffh—fucking psyched m-my-myself up for this, and you’re just gonna walk away!?”

“Did you _**want**_ me to incapacitate you?” The Radio Demon responds sharply, a degree too loud, too frazzled by the abrupt change in atmosphere, too startled by the shift in demeanour, to react on any level less than. 

Vox launches the snow in his hand with no real attempt to aim. “You could at least tell me what the fuck’s goin’ on in that head’a yours!” 

“Don’t be such a child,” the deer ridicules weakly, stepping back to dodge the mediocre second attempt as much as he dodges the request. “And this hardly constitutes as a fight.”

“Don’t change the subject,” the Overlord growls back, packing a third sphere of snow. He doesn’t wish to goad the Radio Demon into, in fact, dispatching him, but he acts without thinking. While initiating a real skirmish with him is simply out of the question, the frustrated energy and adrenaline has to go _somewhere._

For the completely outlandish and distressingly abrupt way the past month’s pensive mood has been broken, Alastor does not think to default to magic to evade this one—despite how considerably more accurate it is. It breaks upon impact when it connects with his leg, and he bristles. 

It would be equally childish to be riled by such a thing, but in acknowledgement of his apparent lack of ability to strike Vox down, inwardly he finds the idea of trading snowballs preferable to trading physical blows. 

Before Vox can prepare a fourth, Alastor scoops up his own, hurried, unpracticed. Not to play along with the Overlord’s little _game,_ certainly not, but to do anything but simply stand there and take the would-be assault, to strike him at least with this.

It breaks apart before it even gets halfway to his supposed adversary, and Vox immediately freezes to stare where the pathetic thing has dissolved into the snow below. 

“Laugh,” the Radio Demon intercepts darkly in advance, hoping the aggravated tones of static about him takes away from his building humiliation, “and I’ll make you wish you were dead again anyway.”

Vox lowers his arm from his intent to throw his own, and glances back up with genuine bewilderment. “Do you not know how to make snowballs?”

“So what?” Alastor denies irritably without directly answering. “It’s unbelievable enough that I should have even stooped to your level of juvenile g—“

He cuts himself off with an incredulous, warning scoff when he finds the Overlord shuffling in his direction, carrying with him a handful of snow. Vox stops beside his shoulder, unwittingly closer than is necessary, to lean in somewhat and show him how best to pack and shape it. 

“Like this,” he instructs, without judgement or criticism. Then he glances up, grinning almost proudly, expectantly, and Alastor is tempted to steal the ball and jam it in the middle of his screen to cover that blasted expression, shut him up, and push him away all at once. 

His head spins from the sudden disperse in tension, and yet he finds himself almost more relieved by it than disappointed. 

“Didn’t get snow where you lived up top?” Vox considers. “Plenty in The Big Apple,” he goes on, almost certainly rambling as a side-effect of his crashing adrenaline. “Never did hear where you were from, though.”

“And you expect me to tell you that _now?”_ The deer backs a few steps away, refusing to get accustomed to standing so near, unwilling to accept their technically truce-less, confusingly amicable terms just yet. He dusts off his sleeve—well, his arm covered in Vox’s borrowed sleeve, anyway—to make himself appear unaffected. “No, if you must know, we did not.”

“No time to learn like the present,” the Overlord insists, bouncing the snowball in his hand once, and gently underhand tosses it in Alastor’s direction. Not to hit him with, but for him to simply catch and use, both for reference and for ammo. Then he returns, without confirming whether or not the deer intends to play along, to his prior location, and makes another of his own. 

Alastor glances once to the immaculate thing he’s been presented, considers, and decides it’s best if he simply just stops thinking for once.

The game isn’t fun, necessarily; Alastor has a somewhat difficult time seeing the appeal in it other than an uninspiring way of passing time. Compared to what the evening was originally foreseen to be like, however, he accepts it as a fair compromise, if childish. His own presence, at least, ensures there will be no prying eyes to see them. 

Making snowballs is not exactly a difficult thing, now that he knows the snow takes a bit of pressure to stick together—if anything, he packs them somewhat tighter than necessary. Vox does not care to specifically aim, content to merely play for a change, and expend his built-up adrenaline and stressed energy. Even if Alastor, with a habitual inclination toward competitiveness, somewhat does, intentionally, and throws considerably harder. 

It’s such an odd, unremarkable, human novelty. One Vox had forgotten how he delighted in, and one Alastor had never known. 

Most often their legs are pelted, or their shoulders are grazed. Rarely do the two manage to land direct hits unless by chance. The worst damage Vox can do is flatten one of the deer’s not-ears temporarily. 

The worst damage Alastor can do, as he learns the hard way, is smacking the Overlord squarely in the eye.

He promptly goes still with alarm, and observes, as he always seems to now, to make sure he has not damaged his former rival’s face. He does not like how long it takes for the taller demon to lower his hands from cradling the place of impact. 

Eventually his hand comes away with a thin shower of sparks, and Vox inspects his claws as though following some long-unneeded compulsion to check for blood. Though he is unable to see it for what it is, he sees the small fracture partially obstructing the vision of his left eye, and grimaces. 

The TV Overlord breathes a curse, more disappointed than aggrieved. He winces, lowers his head, covers the spot again, reluctant to let the Radio Demon see, despite how aware he is of his own suspicious, vulnerable behaviour. 

He wonders if, like Angel, they are past the point of needing facades, or if it’s still too soon. Not that he’s giving himself much of a choice, really, for how difficult it is to suppress a second rain of sparks and a shudder at his own humility and defeat. It feels he can go barely a week lately without suffering some form of physical break or lapse in control—or worse, both. 

It cuts deeper, somehow, that it should ruin a moment like this, that he should be reduced to shivering at the stinging cold that seeps through the glass, when he should instead be relishing in something almost comparable to normalcy and amity.

What is Alastor going to think, seeing him in such a pathetic state again? Is this what nearly made him abandon their attempts at truces at all? What good is he as a rival, if he can barely keep his head about him—sometimes all too literally?

“Vox?”

The voice cuts through his building frenzy of thoughts.

It hits him, rather suddenly, that in the past countless years, he has almost never heard his own name spoken without an air of condescending sarcasm or critical disapproval—until now. 

The Overlord lifts his head from what, from Alastor’s perspective, had been the appearance of a sad, dejected, sobbing household appliance. Far less amusing than the first time he had seen it, and thrice the amount of concerning, he allows himself. 

Through the mildly spiderwebbing crack over his eye, Vox looks to find the deer stopped halfway across their makeshift battlefield toward him, a hand lifted uncertainly, unsure of whether to reach for him or to return to its side, and regarding him with a, dare he say, weakly worried smile. 

“That wasn’t my intention,” Alastor states plainly. Though unsure of how to handle the situation, at the very least, he does not wish to be on comparable terms with the likes of _Valentino._

“I know; I know it wasn’t.” As the Overlord slowly straightens back up, his still-nearby hand doesn’t bother to attempt catching a small piece of glass that falls loose. He tries not to wince, tries not to show how unpleasant the sensation of cold air is to the exposed layer beneath. “Not if it’s you.”

And never again, if Alastor can help it.

For once, the Radio Demon does not try to deflect this softness. He merely lets it glance off of him as he calmly, but still promptly, slips out from Vox’s slightly-too-big overcoat, and holds it up to him. “You need this more than I.”

“You never did tell me what you’re thinkin’,” the Overlord jokingly complains to distract himself. With his right hand, he reaches for the heavy cloth, and brings it against the broken side of his face to shield the sensitive spot.

“I don’t know anymore, myself,” the Radio Demon admits simply. “And that’s the problem.”

“That mean I got a chance?”

“Never in a million years.”

“And in a million and one?”

Alastor regards him with a reproving, but not hostile, huff and tilt of his head. Never has he heard a simple question packed with as much adoring sweetness as resigned hopefulness. Never does he want to hear it again, he tells himself, but maybe it’s nice to be wanted. Maybe it’s nice to be respected enough to leave it as something comparable to _banter._

Vox tries, but he does not expect, the deer understands. He tries, he hopes, and he offers his heart in ways that are indirect enough to be unusual, but not distasteful. 

The past few years, the past month especially, make sense in that moment, somehow.

“Go home, Vox.” The Radio Demon says, a touch more sincere in its kindness than he normally would. “Fix yourself up, and don’t worry about the state of our truce.”

“Can’t you at least tell me what you think that means for now?” The taller demon urges, equal parts patient and hopeful.

“It means I’d rather not tear you to pieces if given the choice,” Alastor mutters with unsettled candidness, reluctant to drag his sincerity out for too long, and begins to turn away. “Give me a reason to, however, and you’ll regret assuming it means I’m unable.”

“Friends, then?” Vox ventures a second time.

“Not quite,” the Radio Demon turns his head to glance over his shoulder, and leaves him with a smile that is not unpleasant, but tough to discern. “Merely not enemies.”

“I can deal with that.”

Despite the snow, the freezing cold seeping into his circuits, and Valentino’s compounding metaphorical winter, it is the warmest Vox has ever felt.


End file.
